Puppet Designer Seeks to Breathe New Life Into the Endangered Craft of Marionette Making
Award-winning puppet designer Oliver Hymans, Associate Director of the Little Angel Theatre in London, spoke about bringing life to inanimate objects while seeking to breathe new life into the endangered craft of marionette making.
Oliver is trained in marionette puppetry making, an ancient art form that was added to the Heritage Crafts Red List of Endangered Crafts in 2023 due to a shortage of people learning how to make marionette string puppets. Oliver is passionate about passing the skill of marionette puppetry down through the generations to keep it alive.
Hymans sketched, carved, assembled, and strung a traditional wooden marionette, explaining how gravity and a carefully balanced design work together to give the character such expressive movement. He also shared how he keeps learning and experimenting.
Oliver discusses puppet making materials, character building and how much he learnt from watching YouTube video tutorials and by experimenting with materials.
