More than 36 technical design and performance students from Wimbledon collaborated to devise a series of exciting, community-focused, large-scale puppet performances this month in east London.
Titled Travelling Tales, the performances took over a new public garden space at a housing development at 250 City Road on Friday 5 February.
With characters including a giant turtle, seagull, fish, gardener, and a ‘mystic’ bull, the 3 performances used large-scale puppets alongside traditional shadow puppetry to tell a tale of travelling and to reflect upon recent political and ecological events.
The project was a collaboration between students from across Wimbledon's performance and performance design courses including BA Acting and Performance, BA Costume for Theatre and Screen, BA Technical Arts for Theatre and Performance and BA Theatre Design.
All the designs and models were conceived, built, and performed by 2nd year students using ecologically mindful materials where possible.
The shows took initial inspiration from writers such as Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Estelle Savasta’s Going Through as well as researching recent large-scale puppet performances in the UK such as The Hatchling and Little Amal.
Tayte Ewen, a student on BA Technical Arts for Theatre and Performance, said: “We decided to create the Floating Gardener from Haroun and the Sea of Stories. The story follows the journey of Haroun and the journey he embarks on discovering how polluted the ocean has become.
We created the Gardener as a reflection on the current climate crisis, using as many up-cycled materials that we could find from scrap stores or rubbish bins. The Gardener illustrates that as a society we are running out of time. We are the last generation that can make a change and fight against environmental destruction.”
Speaking about the project, BA Technical Arts for Theatre and Performance course leader Simon Stringer said: "This has been one of the most exciting projects to come out of the BA Technical Arts for Theatre and Performance course.
"We were incredibly fortunate to work with leading UK-based puppeteers and large-scale artists Giles Walker, Carl Robertshaw and Mervyn Millar to help us realise some fantastic large-scale theatrical puppets. I really think the results speak for themselves and they have set a very high standard for the years that follow."
Mervyn Millar, Creative Associate for the National Theatre's War Horse and Director of theatrical puppetry specialists Significant Object, worked with the students on the project. Of their process, he said: “Wimbledon's Travelling Tales project is an amazingly fertile and inventive piece of creativity and ambition. It's been a pleasure to watch as the different specialist courses came together to combine their skills and training.
"I've really enjoyed working closely with the students to find the right solutions to the challenges that are in their designs and seeing how resourceful they have been in tackling the task.”