Manipulating Marionettes Course: A New Approach

Name: Manipulating Marionettes Course: A New Approach
Start: 2025-04-25T10:00:00+01:00
End: 2025-04-26T17:00:00+01:00
Location: Great North Museum: Hancock

Schedule

Fri, 25 Apr, 2025 at 10:00 am to Sat, 26 Apr, 2025 at 05:00 pm

UTC+01:00

Location

Great North Museum: Hancock | Newcastle Upon Tyne, EN

with Stephen Mottram
10am-5pm daily. This workshop is about the movement of String Puppets and as such is a physical performance workshop where participants will spend a lot of time manipulating marionettes. However, my secondary aim is to produce a collective understanding that the bar for marionette performance can be raised significantly if we embrace new knowledge about how our brains read information from the movement of others. This, coupled with new attitudes to designing puppets and their controls, is a vital tool for the director of marionettes.
Participants will work with a range of string puppet types including many of the figures used in my productions over the years including The Seed Carriers and The Seas of Organillo as well as recent figures produced during lockdown which represent a completely new take on the magical possibilities of what we think of as the traditional marionette theatre.
Stephen Mottram’s Animata has performed in more than 40 countries worldwide. Using string puppets, automata and specially composed electroacoustic music, the majority of Stephen’s work is directed at adult audiences and is without text. His best known shows are The Seed Carriers, The Seas of Organillo and In Suspension. In addition to his stage work, Stephen regularly teaches at a number of performing arts colleges, including L’institut International de la Marionnette in Charleville Mézières, France and Accademia MAAF in Pinerolo, Italy.