The Fabularium: A reflective case study of Practice-as-Research (P-a-R) into outdoor performance training and graduate enterprise delivered at Coventry University 2010-2017.

This article documents the formation and development an outdoor performance company that has emerged from pedagogical research and practice undertaken since 2010.

The semi-formal training of (initially undergraduate) performers has focused upon popular outdoor performance skillsets, including half and full mask work; puppetry; acrobatics; stilt walking; fooling; walkabouts; drum processions; story-telling vignettes and songs. The work has explicitly drawn upon historical traditions, reinterpreting the mummers’ bestiary and Commedia dell’Arte, as well as other 20th century approaches to mask performance.

Training models have emerged which bear comparison to historical models for training in popular performance. There is a sense of a journeyman’s approach to training and skills acquisition, as older performers pass on personal repertoires of physical routines, sight gags and tricks, audience interaction and patter etc. Students also work as ‘apprentices’ alongside professional puppet and mask makers and peer-to-peer training is discussed whereby previously trained Fabularium performers pass on the repertoire to new performers. The apparent continuity of approach is examined as traditional popular forms are assimilated and passed on via these teaching and training methods.