A short film about making The Demon Mastiff in the Orphan of Zhao by the RSC with myself and Movement and Puppetry Director Will Tucket, film by James Ospray.

The biggest puppet yet. This Autumn, The Royal Shakespeare Company produced The Orphan of Zhao – Directed by Gregory Dorian, Design by Niki Turner  and Movement and Puppetry Director Will Tucket. Although Will and I hadn’t met before, I had worked on some of the puppets for one of his previous shows, Faeries.

The Demon Mastiff Puppet had some very challenging scenes. Four legged puppets are no walk in the park and actors Chris Lew Kum Hoi, Siu Hun Li and Joan Iyiola took up the challenge becoming puppeteers in but a couple of months! It’s incredible hard work and amazing to watch them develop into a great puppeteering team with Will. The Mastiff puppet undergoes a lot of strain in his violent scenes and it’s hard work to design a puppet to endure the action. (Video on it’s way soon!).

Noctua, Athena’s Owl, commissioned by Steam Industry Free Theatre for The Scoop this summer. Noctua featured in Steam’s three shows, The Trojan Horse, Agamemnon and Orestes adapted from Aeschylus.

Thank you to Sheila Burnett for providing the photography!

Designed by Toby Olie and Commissioned by Lizzie Frankl Props, we produced a family of illuminating coral grouper fish puppets made from polypropylene plastic.

The Fish were for the touring production of Disney’s Little Mermaid in Holland this summer.

Meet Sebastian, he is attention seeking sock monster. Likely Story asked me mock up their character for their production ‘The Locked Door‘, a children’s show for all ages about a girl who wishes for more than she bargained for. Likely Story have a wonderfully inventive way of bringing a story to life and I sincerely hope that The Locked Door gets the reception it deserves to gain the funding it needs to reach the next level.

I can’t reveal much about this big guy but the idea is that he’s made from affordable materials with instructions anyone can follow.

Another commission from Jay Green of Bedales School in Petersfield. My brief was to design and build a puppet of a young boy to be puppeteered by one person alone.

When I was researching for Jay’s earlier Commission of Pacino I came across an excellent boy puppet by Mary Robinette on you tube. This was the inspiration behind my boy puppet, which combined Mary Robinette’s puppeteering technique with puppet making techniques I had learned at Blind Summit.

The Boy was used in Jay Greens production of Shakespeare’s Midsummer’s Nights Dream at The Olivier Theatre in Bedales School, winter, 2010.