The Stage

North London venues to host adult puppetry festival

Published Tuesday 13 October 2009 at 16:48 by Lalayn Baluch

Islington’s Little Angel Theatre is to launch the first adult puppetry festival to take place in London in more than 25 years.

The ten-day Suspense festival will feature masterclasses, lectures and performances by 24 companies, including UK organisations Faulty Optic, Green Ginger and Horse + Bamboo Theatre, and international groups TAMTAM Objektentheater and Inkfish.

The programme of events will be presented in six north London venues – the Little Angel Theatre, Jackson’s Lane arts centre, the Pleasance Theatre and Stagespace, Rosemary Branch Theatre, the Nave, and the Puppet Theatre Barge.

The Central School of Speech and Drama and the Little Angel have also joined forces to create a one-day symposium on puppetry, which will feature talks by theatre practitioners, researchers and performers.

Peter Glanville, Suspense festival director and artistic director of the Little Angel, believes puppetry is going through a “renaissance”.

He said recent shows such as War Horse, Avenue Q and Anthony Minghella’s Madam Butterfly have revealed how “sophisticated, irrational, grotesque and potent the artform can be”.

“The work we have programmed for Suspense represents not only the changing landscape of contemporary puppetry practice but a challenge to the way theatre is made – opening new doors of expressiveness,” he added.

Suspense will run from October 30 until November 8.