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- ANGEL: Today on People Behind the Puppets, I'm speaking to Jess Shead. She's an intern here at Little Angel
and is supporting us across all of our departments. - Hey.
- Hi Jess, I'm Angel, nice to meet you. - And you, how are you doing?
- I'm good, thank you. So, what brought you here to Little Angel?
- So, I studied Fine Art in university and then graduated in 2019. And during my time at university,
I was really interested in sculpture, especially, like, figurative sculpture, but in all different types of, like,
materials and medium. And I was really interested in how effective and how evocative a human form is
and then applying movement very naturally led me to puppetry. So I did a traineeship with the Puppet Barge -
- Ooh! - Yeah, which is really really amazing,
and they specialised in Victorian marionettes which is a very traditional form of puppetry.
- So that's string puppets? - Yeah. And since then, I did a bit of voluntary work here,
and then saw that there was an amazing opportunity to be an intern, so I applied and this is where we are now.
- Wow. Can you tell us a bit more about the Puppet Barge and the marionettes you worked with?
- Yeah, of course. So they're all very traditional, yeah, long string marionettes which means you have a bridge
high up above the audience that you can't see, and you've got these really long strings and then a little stage.
And it's a very kind of, quite a niche style of puppetry which I don't think is as common now but it's really beautiful.
And the Puppet Barge is actually on a barge boat, a really large barge boat
- A boat?! - Yeah, very unconventional theatre.
- Yeah! - And it's run by the Middleton family.
I think it's been running since the 80s and it's still in the same family which is really wonderful, and they're based in Little Venice.
- Wow, a theatre on a boat! Gosh! So Jess, what is it that you most enjoy about making puppets?
I really love the detail and the attention to the kind of joints and the visuals.
I really love making kind of quite... fairly realistic puppets, that... - Like me?
- [LAUGHS] Very much. I also really love learning about the mechanisms which are very technical.
Yeah, still learning a lot about that right now. [LAUGHS]
- So, when you are making, what are three things you need to consider?
- You have to consider the weight of the puppet because, you know, holding it for a long time can get
quite straining even if they're quite small. So you have to think about lighter materials and...
What else do you have to think about? You have to think about the ease of, or how many hands do you have?
Realistically, you have two, so what can you do with these two hands? And how many rods you might have.
- Ah. So rods are like sticks? - Yeah. Little sticks in the hands or in the back of the head
or, you know, to get that extra movement and dexterity.
- Mm-hmm. So, you've talked about rods. There are quite a few different kinds of puppets. What's your favourite and why?
- Ooh... There's so many, it's really difficult and I haven't managed to try all of them yet so...
I do have a very soft spot for marionettes for obvious reasons.
- What is it about marionettes that are so great? - I think there's quite a charm to how careful and slow
you have to be often with the movement. So you don't want it to be jerking around quite erratically.
There's quite a choreographed nature to marionettes that I find quite beautiful.
- Hmm, lovely. I can see you've got a little puppet there, can we have a look?
- Yes, you can, okay. - Oh, that's a string puppet?
- There we go. Yeah, this is a little simple marionette that I've created for the new Bugaboo show.
- Oh, yeah. - It's called the long nosed prickly beast.
- Gosh. He looks quite angry. - Yeah, yeah, quite angry. I think he's quite territorial.
- Yeah, he looks it. Oh gosh. I like how he moves. The strings are quite - they do something funny.
I guess like you said, you have to be quite gentle with them, you don't want to jerk it around.
- Definitely. But it's really nice if you've got that balance, you can do quite slow and delicate movements,
or, yeah, you can have a more angered look. - Yeah! Absolutely, it looks even more angry now, wow!
And do you have a puppet, Jess, that our viewers can make at home?
- Yes. So I have this little snake. It's a very simple articulated puppet made from toilet rolls,
which hopefully I think everyone should have. - Yeah!
- And it's got two little rods, one in the back of the tail and one behind the head, which means you can get this
really lovely fluid movement when you operate him or her. - Yeah, gosh, it's got lots of joints, hasn't it?
- Yeah, it's really... and they're all held together with just really simple split pins, and you can decorate it
and paint it however you want. I don't know what type the snake is, but I found the most beautiful snake
on Google Images I could find. - Oh, well I guess you could make any snake, couldn't you?
If you want to make a snake puppet just like Jess, you can download the instructions from our website.
Jess, thank you so much for talking to me today. - Thank you so much.
- You're welcome. Thanks for watching everyone. Bye! - Bye!
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