![]() All the actors are puppeteers in that sense - they all help to create that character.’Ĭonstantly on the lookout for the next challenge, Mr Millar recently finished work on The Hatchling, an outdoor theatre project that’s been six years in the making, involving a giant dragon puppet hatching and making her way through Plymouth city centre, interacting with people and her surroundings as she goes, before taking flight across Plymouth Sound.Yet the common perception of puppetry as an entertainment primarily for children persists. If you’re playing opposite an actor who doesn’t have that engagement, the audience loses the ability to imagine the elephant very quickly. ‘I can put as beautiful an elephant as I want on stage, but it’s the other actors believing in her that gives the audience the lead on how to do it. The actors performing on stage opposite the puppet are equally as key to its success, adds Mr Millar. Puppeteers: Nyron Levy, Jessica Spalis, Chris Milford, Daniel Fanning. ‘Queenie’ puppet designed by Mervyn Millar and Tracy Waller. Mr Millar’s latest elephant is not his first: this one is from a production called Circus 1903. ‘The elephant doesn’t need to do any galloping around or any stunts, so its work is very emotional - we’ve tried to give the performers as much range as we can to show changes in mood and intention.’ ‘Leaning on previous experience, we focused on the story we are telling, the mechanisms we could use and how to make it easier for the performer,’ he explains. In collaboration with puppet designer Tracy Waller, Mr Millar began the process of developing the elephant by engaging with the character, allowing her personality to feed into research of the animal and how it moves. Perhaps it’s so pure because they don’t have the language to distract - their judgement, timing and sensitivity are incredibly moving.’ ‘Their performance is completely in the moment, playing the feelings together. ‘The four performers playing the elephant have to put aside their egos and create one big character between them,’ he notes. ‘They use their whole body to breathe and show that shift of emotion in the animal’s body.’Īs with Joey, coordination between the puppeteers is paramount to one of Mr Millar’s latest constructs - a life-sized elephant for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s musical production of The Magician’s Elephant, based on Kate DiCamillo’s bestselling children’s novel. ‘We would often find that the heart of the horse, where the lungs are, is a great place for a big, emotional actor,’ discloses Mr Millar. Ear movements and tail flicks show the horse tuning into what’s going on around him to indicate rhythm of breath, the performer at the heart bends his knees to move the body up and down. As well as the physical challenge of moving him fluidly across the stage, the puppeteers make the horse noises and control both technical and emotional indicators. In War Horse, Joey is operated by three performers: one each at the head, heart and hind. Production directed by Tessa Walker and designed by Jamie Vartan. Allison Mackenzie with puppeteers Nuno Silva, David Albury and James Charlton. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, puppet designed by Mervyn Millar and Jo Lakin, at Birmingham Rep, 2015. It’s very precise in how it is executed.’ Like a musical-theatre or radio actor channelling emotion through a specific tool - voice or placement - the puppeteer uses a tool outside their body to communicate an emotional, grounded and honest performance. Actors train to be the centre of attention, but, in puppetry, you’re teaching them to say “don’t look at me, look at this”. ‘When you’re learning, using a simple object is more useful than struggling with a technically complicated puppet. ‘You don’t need to carve a beautiful puppet to be able to learn, you can do puppetry with anything - sticks, paper, bits of cloth,’ he insists. Having written three books on the subject, he asserts that an audience establishes a connection with the marionette as a result of the instinct and skill of the puppeteer to generate expression. Artistically, it’s very rewarding.’Ī large component of Mr Millar’s job is teaching actors the technique required to bring his creations to life. It’s all the theatrical arts in one image. ![]() ![]() ![]() One of the reasons I wanted to work in theatre is that it’s a world in which you won’t get bored there are so many stories and styles you can tap into and puppetry is a total form of that - it’s got design, movement, singing, dancing. ‘The more I worked with them, the more I found in them. Country Life's Top 100 architects, builders, designers and gardeners.
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