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ANGEL: Today on People Behind the Puppets,
I'm speaking to Maia Kirkman-Richards. She calls herself a puppet person,
because she works in all aspects of puppetry. Let's meet her.
Hello, Maia, I'm Angel. MAIA: Hi, Angel, nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you, too. Now, Maia, tell us, how did you first get into puppet making?
- I suppose I have always been a very creative person,
and I've always loved sort of sinking deep into projects,
and doing research on creative things, so I've always been quite creative.
And my mum actually reminded me this morning that
I used to take puppets on holiday with me and I'd totally forgotten about that memory!
- Can I come? - Because we went to the beach, I think you would've liked it, actually!
Even though I suppose the beach is quite a strange place for a puppet.
But I guess I've always had puppets around me, whether I've realised it or not.
And then I went to drama school. - Mm-hmm.
- And I trained to be an actor. And there was actually a module at drama school
called storytelling, and they were encouraging us to come up with creative ways of storytelling,
so naturally, I wanted to use a puppet. And they told me that it was a great idea.
And then on my feedback form - the feedback from the tutor was "too much puppetry".
- What?! Too much puppetry?! - It's so offensive, I know!
I'm sorry to say that in front of you but they said that there was too much puppetry.
So here I am, basically just surrounding myself with puppets now.
So after drama school, I started performing with puppets,
and then I went into making with puppets, and designing with puppets,
had my own puppet company - it all seemed to spiral quite quickly,
which I think probably means you're doing the right thing, when things seem to fall into place,
I think it means you've found your thing. - Absolutely. But Maya, why puppets?
What is it about them that you enjoy so much?
- Good question! I think with puppetry, as opposed to acting,
to make a puppet come to life, there's so many different people involved,
and I love that team side of it. I love that if you're an actor,
of course there's an amazing writer and a director and all of those people,
but it tends to just be the actor's job to bring that one character to life,
whereas with a puppet, it passes through so many people's hands,
and through so many people's brains. I think it's really lovely
that it takes a full team of creativeness to build one thing. I think that's really special.
- Yeah, that does sound special, absolutely.
Now, there are a lot of different types of puppets. What's your favourite and why?
- Aside from you, obviously, I would say... [ANGEL LAUGHS]
It's tricky, because I think I invest myself emotionally quite a lot
in whatever puppet I'm making. I put a lot into it and I feel like it sort of becomes my whole world.
So my tendency would be to say that whatever I've made last is my favourite puppet.
- Ah! - But what I will say is at the moment
I'm quite interested by mashing the puppet world with other sorts of specialists' worlds.
- OK. - Like circus, or dance...
I think it's always really interesting when two worlds collide. It normally results in something quite special.
- Oh, I see! Now, you trained as an actor. Has that been useful in working with puppets?
- Yeah, I think it really has, actually. I think it's important
to be able to see puppetry from all the different sides of a performance.
I think it's important to have some knowledge in absolutely everything to do with a performance
so that you never take any role for granted. I think it's important to know how the actor is feeling,
and what the actor might need from you as a maker or a designer,
or a puppet director. I think that's always going to be useful, absolutely.
- Yeah, yeah. And when you're making a puppet, what are three things you need to consider?
- OK, three things I need to consider would be: what does the puppet need to be able to do?
For example, is it a young boy puppet that needs to be able to climb walls,
or is it a fox that needs to carry things in its mouth? It's important to know
what it needs to be able to do, and how I can help the puppet do those things
through my making. Another thing would be... how much time do I have?
- Oh, yes, that's important. - Yeah, because you can make, you know,
a whale in a day, but it certainly wouldn't look the same as a whale that took months to make.
So, how much time do I have? ... And what else...
I think...
Oh yeah, really important one: it needs to be able to fit within the world of the show.
So how do I make it look like it belongs in the show? I think it's really important
not just to make something that you think is cool,
and then throw it into a performance where it might not fit.
I think it's really important that it looks really cool with the other actors and puppets,
the sets, the costumes... so it belongs. - Yeah, that makes sense.
So, Mia - oh, you're not called Mia! - It's alright, it's alright!
- No, it's not! It's Maia, sorry! Maia, I do apologise. - That's OK.
- Do you have a puppet with you today? - I do, would you like to meet them?
- Yes, please! - OK, let's see if I can pop him on.
He's quite small, quite a lot smaller than you. - Oh, yeah!
- But here he comes... Oh, here he is!
- Hello! - Here he is, what do you think?
- Hold on! What's his hair made of? - Good question! His hair is actually made of cress,
which I managed to grow myself which is very impressive
because I'm not naturally gifted with green fingers.
- [LAUGHS] Oh, I've never seen a puppet with real living plant hair before!
- I know! Well, I thought it was quite fun that an aspect of this puppet is actually alive,
because plants are living things too, aren't they?
So I thought it was quite cool that there was a bit of him that was actually alive and growing.
- Yeah. And it's a glove, is it? - It is. It's a glove and it's a tiny little plant pot,
and some buttons for eyes, and I've just managed to hide one of the fingers of the gloves
up inside his body, and I've made some little holes around the back
so that I can walk him with my own fingers, which I always loved doing when I was younger,
actually, I loved pretending that my fingers were little people and running around on surfaces, so...
- It looks fun! - It does, it's great fun. It's great fun.
- If you want to make one of these just like Maia's,
you can download the instructions from our website. Maia, thanks so much for coming today.
- Oh, thanks for chatting with me. I've loved it.
- You're welcome. Bye, everyone! - Bye!
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