Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
This has been my bible and has been a constant reference for the designing of puppet movements. I [Adrian] didn’t study puppet theatre at university and so I have had to teach myself everything along the way. Fettig, by all accounts, was a grumpy man and didn’t have a fully-fledged professional theatre career, but his great passion and skill was to make and perfect direct-controlled puppets. There are lots of illustrations and diagrams and mechanisms – indispensable.
Your next book is something of a departure and takes you back somewhat. Why is a book about a childhood fantasy so important to your practice?
Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree is about the fantasy worlds we construct. Our work has always been about constructing worlds, and I have realised time and time again that this began for me [Basil] with this childhood story of escape and enchantment. We have often tried to buy it from an antiquarian children’s bookstore in one of those side streets near the British Museum, and when I asked them why they don’t have it the person there said it’s one of those books that if people have them they don’t ever let them go.
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Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler are founders of the cutting edge Handspring Puppet Company whose signature style involves puppeteers sharing the stage with their puppets, along the lines of Japanese Bunraku but adapted so that the puppeteers are not obscured but form an integral part of the action on stage. Their creations for the smash hit War Horse are stunning audiences this Christmas at the New London Theatre and will hit the Lincoln Centre in New York in 2011 after a European tour. Their production of Woyzeck on the Highveld is currently touring in Spain and France.
