The Olivier-award-winning puppets in the new stage version of Life of Pi – including a tiger so stunning it will stalk your dreams – were not always destined to exist. Puppetry may be becoming increasingly mainstream, but there’s still a bit of scepticism out there. “It took a bit of convincing,” says director Max Webster, who I catch en route to the National Theatre Studio. “I think there’s still the legacy of puppetry’s connection to family theatre, which is great – but I think in some people’s minds that can limit its scope or appeal.”
Webster’s response to the naysayers? He chuckles mischievously: “My answer was to text them pictures of people in tiger onesies.” After that, came a workshop in which co-designers Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell made a small-scale version of their prowling puppet: “As soon as that prototype tiger was in the room, we didn’t need to have any more difficult conversations.”
Webster believes that puppetry’s growing popularity is part of a wider shift throughout the industry. “It’s all part of a trend, which includes the slightly larger scale family show – titles like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time or Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – which aren’t actually puppetry titles but have a large physical, visual storytelling aesthetic that a grandparent can bring a grandchild to,” he says. “The possibility of that sort of show being a commercial success has grown over the last 10 years.”
Ever since War Horse propelled puppetry into the mainstream, Finn Caldwell – who worked on the show as a young designer and puppeteer – has been aware of how fleeting these theatrical fads can be. “When I was training in drama school, mask [theatre] had a period of great popularity and then just sort of died,” he recalls. “I was worried that would happen with puppetry, too. It dawned on me that the way to make people continually interested in puppets was not to constantly surprise them with the new flashy thing, but to make the acting better.”
For Caldwell, Life of Pi’s recent Olivier win for best supporting actor – awarded to the seven puppeteers who perform the tiger on rotation – is an important step forward for his craft; a recognition that “extraordinary things can be achieved using puppetry, not just visually but in terms of the meat of what drama is: emotion and conflict”.
But how to make a puppet perform better? A lot of it comes down to detail. Get the anatomy right, says Caldwell, and the character will follow: “Nick Barnes and I will always look at the real anatomy of these animals – because if you put all the joints in the right place in the skeleton, the puppet will want to behave like the animal.” The team also watch endless videos of the animals to work out “how they do what they do – and why they do it”.
That quest to get inside the tiger’s head is an ongoing process for the puppeteers currently performing in Life of Pi, who I catch a few hours before curtain up at Wyndham’s theatre, enthusiastically talking over each other and cheering one another on. Scarlett Wilderink, who plays the tiger’s heart, and Fred Davis, the head, have something of an obsession with the animal they bring to life each night: “To this day, we’ll still find articles about tigers interacting: the way they curl their paws when they’re eating or take down prey of different sizes. Not all of it is useful, but it all informs the choices that Richard Parker [the tiger’s name] is able to make and the interactions he has.”
Despite the wealth of detail behind the performance, the experience itself is surprisingly calming for Wilderink: “It’s completely meditative. After you’ve had a good show, you’re on the floor, physically, but in your mind you’re so relaxed.”
As with so many UK-based careers in puppetry, Wilderink’s journey began with War Horse, where she auditioned as a musician but didn’t get in. “The team asked me if I’d be interested in training up as a puppeteer, and I haven’t looked back,” she says. “It’s the most wholesome, rewarding, collaborative theatrical experience in the world. There’s nothing like it. When it’s good” – and here, Davis finishes Wilderink’s sentence for her – “You’re on cloud nine.”
Cloud nine isn’t quite the phrase that comes to mind when I drop in on rehearsals for Regent’s Park theatre’s new puppet-led 101 Dalmatians musical. The session is being steered by puppetry director Toby Olié, whose career – need we mention – started with War Horse. There are smiles all round from the four puppeteers in the room (two for each dalmatian), but progress is proving slow. Really slow. Later, when I talk to the show’s overall director, Timothy Sheader, he will tell me – with just the hint of a sigh – that the one thing you need, above all, when working with puppets is time. Lots of time.
By Olié’s calculations, the 101 Dalmatians team cover approximately 30 seconds of real-time action in a standard day’s rehearsal. (On Olié’s last show, Animal Farm, they positively whizzed through three and a half minutes of real-time action a day.) As I watch rehearsals unfold with almost painful precision, every wag of the tale or flicker of the ear is open for discussion. At one point, Olié cheerfully cries out to the actors: “Don’t be afraid to amp up the dog!” Yana Penrose, who is controlling Perdi, instinctively cocks the dog’s head in Olié’s direction, as if to listen more closely. Just a tiny bit of that puppetry magic is creeping in, as these inanimate objects begin to take on a mysterious life of their own.
The hope, says Penrose, is that by the end of rehearsals all the logistical concerns will have melted away: “The technical stuff sinks in, and then you can start to layer loads of things on top of that. It takes a while to develop a relationship with your fellow puppeteers, but by the time the show opens, we’re like one person.”
For Penrose, it was watching a production of Dr Seuss’s The Lorax (directed by Max Webster, in the small world of puppetry circles) that got her hooked. Something was accidentally thrown into the audience, and the puppeteers were forced to improvise. “You could see this mistake hadn’t thrown them at all,” she remembers. “In fact, it was just another opportunity to have a joyful moment of puppeteering, and that was a real moment for me. It was such stunning work. That’s where we all aim to get when we’re puppeteering.”
Puppeteering has helped Penrose improve her acting in a way that drama school never quite could: “I was always told to do less and I just couldn’t understand what my tutors were talking about. Now, with puppeteering, I can step back and trust that these beautiful puppets, that have been made with such incredible skill, can do some of the job for me.” The audience doesn’t need much, she says, to understand a lot: “You can get so much from a little movement of a puppet. A tiny flick of the ear can mean so much.”
It is this focus on the finer details of performance that Olié, just like his long-term collaborator Caldwell, hopes will ensure puppetry’s enduring appeal: “Striving for higher standards in puppet acting – that’s what we’re going for. The form has to keep surprising people and telling stories in ways that it hasn’t before if it’s going to stick around.”
Alongside pushing the performance side of things, Olié also believes the darker side of puppetry is ripe for exploration. It is an aspect of the art he started to interrogate more fully in his recent work on Animal Farm, he says. “We started to push the tone. We said, yes, it’s puppets, but don’t expect it to be comforting or cosy. Don’t expect this to be too friendly.”
In one particularly harrowing scene, Penrose – who played the cow, horse and dog – put a much-loved cat puppet into a bag and, with one brutal strike, broke its neck. “Puppetry is still presumed to be for young audiences and families,” says Olié, “but we can get quite graphic with puppets. You can push the boundaries.” Penrose adds with some pride: “You can really break people’s hearts with puppets.”
Life of Pi is at Wyndham’s theatre, London, until 30 October; 101 Dalmatians is at Regent’s Park Open Air theatre, London, until 28 August.
