Suspense Puppetry Festival: All Grown Up

Chris Pirie’s company, Green Ginger, is presenting
Rust, a grotesque and funny story of rival pirate radio
stations, at the Pleasance. The company has been making work for
both adults and children for the last 30 years, but it’s only recently, says
Pirie, that the market for adult puppetry has really opened up in this country.
“It’s very much a sea change –
of which Suspense is a fine example. Puppetry’s grown up.”

The last
few years have witnessed the success of puppet-integrated productions including
Greg Doran’s RSC staging of Venus and Adonis, the National
Theatre’s War Horse, now running in the West End, and the
comedy musical Avenue Q. Puppetry, those involved with
Suspense are thrilled to note, is no longer considered purely a form of
children’s entertainment, but a bona fide dramaturgical tool in its own right,
at least in the eyes of some enlightened theatre makers and audiences.

There is
still much to be done, however, when it comes to opening audiences up to the
full potential of this art form. Alissa Mello is artistic director of New
York company Inkfish, whose show, The Brain, is playing at
the Little Angel Theatre, Suspense’s primary venue. She is also conducting
research into contemporary European adult puppet theatre at Royal Holloway’s
Department of Theatre and Drama, so is ideally placed to comment on how the
situation in the UK differs from that on the continent.

“In Europe,
there is a wide festival circuit which includes an extensive array of adult
puppetry. That’s why companies like Green Ginger and Faulty Optic are very well
known outside of the UK. It’s only been recently that there’s been an emergence
of festivals here that focus on that.” Suspense in particular, she says, is a
fantastic opportunity for London audiences to see what adult puppet theatre can
do. “Having this festival in London is going to be very important for the
community”.

Gerard Schiphorst is co-artistic director of TAMTAM
Objektentheater, a puppetry company from the Netherlands, here presenting To have or not to have?, what the publicity material calls a
‘rusty fairytale of beautiful images’. He acknowledges that a London-based
adult puppetry festival has been “missing” from the circuit and will be of huge
benefit in opening puppetry up to adult audiences, but he is also excited about
Suspense because of its potential as a site for the exchange of ideas between
European and British companies. As well as the packed programme of performance
during the 10 days of Suspense, several workshops, masterclasses and post-show
talks (including those following the two performances of To have or
not to have? on 6 November) are taking place with the aim of
developing puppet theatre practice and the discourse surrounding it.

The UK has a number of other highly acclaimed puppetry
festivals, but aside from Suspense, only one of them, the Scottish Manipulate
Visual Theatre Festival, focuses on adult work. Steve Tiplady of Indefinite
Articles believes that
Suspense “will be the proving ground, if you like. It feels like it could be
something really big and be the lightening rod for the whole adult puppetry
movement”.

Before the
Little Angel’s current artistic director, Peter Glanville, took over in 2006,
Tiplady ran the theatre for two years. He is now back to present the partly
improvised late-night show, Let Us Clay, at The Nave.
Usually a show for younger audiences, but adapted for Suspense, Let Us
Clay exemplifies the infinite capability of puppetry to entertain. His
work appeals to adult audiences, Tiplady says, because “it’s got a whole
imagination thing going on. They take real delight in being forced to do a bit
of work and believe – in something being alive or not seeing the puppeteers. It
brings audiences back towards their childhood in a way, where they were capable
of believing a box was a rocket.”

www.suspensefestival.com