When Puppets Changed Hands - Britain - 1952-1992

"Penny Francis is not a puppeteer, she's nothing to give to puppetry apart from things she can invent." Chris Somerville (24. 10. 2012).

Huddled over an electric heater, in the small foyer of his purpose built puppet theatre, Chris Somerville spoke at length about his life as a puppeteer in Wales, Colwyn Bay. As I sat and listened, London, the home of Penny Francis and the Puppet Centre Trust (PCT), felt a long way away. Inspired by the work of a few pioneering puppeteers, Penny Francis, the 'non-puppeteer', helped found the PCT in 1974. British practitioners of fine art and theatre were quietly 'discovering' puppetry and Francis wanted to trumpet their work. As a result, in 1992 the Arts Council of Great Britain (ACGB) decided to make puppetry a 'priority funding area'. Twenty years later, in 2012, the stage adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's War Horse provided the National Theatre with a quarter of its annual income. This thesis begins a half-century earlier, in 1952, when British puppetry was primarily the hobby of enthusiastic craftsmen. By plotting a journey from hobby into theatre this thesis examines the communities and individuals behind a half-century of British puppetry, 'discovering' moments of cultural appropriation, negotiation and adaptation along the way. The ACGB's decision to take puppetry seriously was triggered by a report, written in 1991. Entitled 'On the Brink of Belonging', the report was an attempt to chart and describe the working lives of puppeteers in the 'United Kingdom', questioning when and why puppetry had earned its low artistic status. Keith Allen, a previous employee of the PCT, carried out the enquiry, concluding that puppetry was one of "contemporary theatre's best kept secrets", taking for granted that puppetry was indeed a form of theatre, however secretive. By 1992, puppetry was embroiled in a language and network of fine arts and human theatre, elements it most certainly lacked at the beginning of our period. Since 1974 puppeteers and non-puppeteers alike had wanted puppetry to belong within the 'arts' as a legitimate form of adult theatre. In 1955, when George Speaight published his 'History of the English Puppet Theatre', the aspirations of its enthusiasts had been quite different. According to Speaight, who dedicates the final chapter of his book to the twentieth century, in 1955 puppetry was "a wide spread activity in many thousands of homes and workshops", primarily a hobby for the "common man". Fifty years earlier, however, at the turn of the century, puppet theatre had been on the verge of extinction; "the voice that called it from the shadows was that of the artist." Speaight's final chapter is only five pages long. But in it he traces a period of fifty years, in which English puppetry transitions from art into hobby. This thesis is a continuation of that history, plotting British puppetry's reintegration within a world of theatre, amongst those with a 'theatre optic'. Puppetry traveled from hobby into theatre, but struggled to become adult along the way. The first twentieth century English artist, says Speaight, to tempt theatre with the wonders of puppetry was Edward Gordon Craig. In 1907, nearly fifty years before our story officially begins, Craig wrote an essay and called it the 'Actor and the Ubermarionette'. The piece was hyperbolic and many of his contemporaries thought Craig wanted the actor gone with a puppet in its place. Craig was in fact protesting against the actor's ego; the puppet represented a utopian alternative for the director, no longer would they have to struggle against the habits and emotions of the living breathing thespian; instead the director would have complete control. Craig approached puppetry with a 'theatre optic'. Theoretically, puppets offered Craig the potential for complete autonomy and control over the creative process of theatre. Long before, and after, people from all walks of life would design, craft and perform with puppets for that same autonomy. Becoming an 'artist', however, and not just a showman or performer, was and is a far more complex procedure, largely dependent on how one discovers puppets and perceives one's role as a puppeteer. British artists such as William Symmonds and Olive Blackham continued Craig's theatrical thought process, approaching the puppet as a theatrical alternative, but they were behind the scenes of a much louder, more domestic form of puppetry. In 1996, long after Craig and Speaight, Henryk Jurkowski published his History of European Puppet Theatre. Again, his focus was puppet theatre. In 1957 the German writer Han Richard Purschke had made this distinction between 'puppet theatre' and general 'puppetry'. Like Speaight, Purschke was aware that for many, puppetry was merely a hobby and rarely the theatrical craft of an artist. The works of Speaight, Purschke and Jurkowski all treat puppetry as a form of theatre but one that has so often diverged from the path of 'human theatre' that it has its own unique history. This history differs from all three of the above in that its primary focus is on the very transition of puppetry from hobby back into a theatrical art, assessing the change according to the written and remembered perceptions of those embroiled in a community of British puppetry. For this reason, it is a forty-year history of puppetry and not purely puppet theatre. The 'show business' of televised puppetry in this period deserves its own thorough history; this thesis focuses primarily on live puppetry. When Jurkowski tackled the subject, he was addressing an imbalance. Since the early 1940s Eastern Europe had been producing some of the most exciting puppetry, the history of which was yet to be written. His focus, therefore, was not on Britain and when it was he relied on the memories of Penny Francis, a founder of the PCT. Since Speaight therefore no historian has focused on the developments of twentieth century puppetry in this country. This thesis is an attempt to do just that, giving a voice to the puppeteers that made it, as well as the non-puppeteers that have written about it. This 'optic' presents two communities, the puppeteer and the non-puppeteer, within a traditionally individual art, examining the blurring of these boundaries as puppetry was expanded, sometimes by puppeteers and sometimes by non-puppeteers. What follows will assess the extent to which the latter can be said to have appropriated puppetry. I am not the first to think of puppetry's use by 'others' in these terms. Scott Cutler Shershow, Rosalind Crone and Robert Leach have all done so too. And yet since Spaeight, no one has written a history of twentieth century British puppetry. This thesis paints part of that picture, depicting puppetry from the inside out. More generally, it is an important case study for the cultural historian, infiltrating the world of a low profile, low status art and tracing a journey from past time into profession. Technically speaking appropriation is the action of taking something for one's own use, typically without the owner's permission. Cultural appropriation, therefore, could be an extension of this: The taking of a cultural practice and using it within an apparently separate sphere, without regard for the community it once 'belonged' to. The cultural appropriation within this thesis is much less neat, but equally contentious. But 'low status art,' is easily imbued with moments of cultural appropriation and the agents of this thesis are all too familiar with its language. The British Puppet and Model Theatre Guild (Guild) is our first institution of puppetry, the focus of chapter one, and the PCT is our last. At first sight the disparity between the two might suggest a clean appropriation of puppetry: once the passion of a dedicated few, later the gimmick of human theatre. However, as institutions they have accessible forums, with accessible individuals all of which reveals a much more continuous and complicated story of change. Shershow's work considers the ways in which an ancient and enduring form of 'popular' and 'folk' culture, puppet theatre, was described, disparaged, celebrated, and exploited by theorists and thinkers, playwrights and performers. For Shershow the use of puppetry in aspirational bourgeois writings is typical of cultural appropriation and yet he suggests that taking things without permission is an inescapable part of all cultural production. In Puppets and Popular Culture the lines between 'folk' and 'elite' 'high' and 'low' are blurred; cultural categories and the elements within them are in flux and appropriation is integral to these shifts. But the work is convoluted and lacks clarity, approaching the subject from a broad literary perspective.

In Rosalind Crone's history of violent Victorians Punch and his wife Judy steal the puppetry limelight. Towards the end of the nineteenth century portrayals of the aggressive marital couple were moved off the streets and into the homes of London gentlemen, a natural evolution of the show as far as Shershow is concerned. For Crone this explanation is unsatisfactory, as it robs the appropriators of any conscious agency. Traditionally, nineteenth century London gentlemen paid Punch performers to 'set up shop' in view of their gentlemanly houses, ammunition for Shershow's argument of natural progression. However, Crone points to Punch, the satirical journal of a bourgeois intelligentsia, and argues that in naming the magazine and later inviting Punch and Judy performers into their homes, upper class men were expressing nostalgia for a youthful enjoyment of puppets and a more general freedom to frolic. The patronage of this class had long supported street performance and now they wanted to reclaim in print, and in the comfort of their own homes, what time and police-control had taken from them. Clearly, British puppetry has received some historical attention, but this thesis hopes to fill the half-century gap between Speaight and Allen's contemporary assessments, elaborating on the former's twentieth century reflections. In 1952 the pulse of British puppetry lay well outside the body of mainstream human theatre, beating away, despondently, in the Guild. In 1950's Britain, this community of enthusiasts considered themselves the guardians of an ancient craft. Their perceptions of puppetry and aspirations for its existence are evidence of a period when British puppetry was more technical than theatrical, domestic rather than majestic. Only ten years later however, during the 1960's, puppetry was called from the shadows of the Guild by artistry and professionalism, both of which offered puppetry as theatre.

In 1974 the PCT was founded and Penny Francis dragged puppeteers 'kicking and screaming' into a new and invented network. These words are not my own, I took them for my own use. 'Kicking and screaming' are the words of Francis. In an interview, 'as I sat and listened', I heard a conscious acknowledgement that puppetry had needed appropriating. By 1974, like Allen twenty years later, Francis was aghast at the status of puppetry in Britain and considered the laboured pulse of the Guild responsible. Since the 1960s it had drowned out the healthier and more promising beat of a few "half dozen artists". Like these artists, Francis considered herself to have the "intelligence" and "optic of a theatre-goer". Unlike them, she was a non-puppeteer and had the time, energy, and human connections to drag an anarchic art into a legitimate and accessible infrastructure, forcing the patrons of human theatre and animated arts to confront the shy puppeteer. Today the impact of money and human theatre on puppetry is the lamentation of the old guard, the self-professed legitimate and dedicated puppeteer: In this thesis, the voice of Chris Somerville.

I found my primary written sources lying inanimate in an archive. They were dedicated to the practical and theoretical existence of puppetry at a time when publicly everything else was silent. The Puppet Master, published continually on a bi-monthly basis since 1953, was Guild subscriber's journal. The glamour and professionalism of this 'journal' was somewhat diminished by the inclusion and dominance of the Guild's domesticated newsletter. Until 1978, however, it was the only forum dedicated to the consideration of puppetry in Britain. Fours years after the foundation of the PCT, however, Animations was created; the second major archival source for this history. The Puppet Master, therefore, provides forty years worth of bi-monthly discussion concerning puppetry whilst Animations contributes to the final fourteen years of this history. The absence of a 'theatre optic' in the former is notable, whilst its inclusion in the latter is even more so.

With the addition of one extra archival source, this half-century history splits easily into three. In 1971, just over twenty years before an official change of heart, the ACGB commissioned an arts teacher from the Bath school of Art and Design to write a report on the current state of puppetry in England. Her name was Helen Binyon. This report also fits into another pattern of three. Between 1955 and 1992 three separate and unrelated 'reports' were written on the state of puppetry in England and Britain. The first was unofficial, an addendum to The History of English Puppet Theatre. Helen Binyon wrote the second, on her typewriter, in 1971, as a private document for Arts Council-eyes only. Another twenty years later, when puppetry was on the brink of belonging, Kieth Allen wrote his. The first was out of enthusiasm; the second was out of professional curiosity. A former employee of the PCT wrote the third and final report, an organization that had dedicated nearly twenty years to raising the status of puppetry, trying to include the art and some of its practitioners within a wider world of theatre and funding. The Puppet Master, Animations and oral histories join the dots between these points. Puppetry makes you believe. That is part of its magic. I interviewed puppeteers so as to understand what had never been chronicled before but also to try and believe: The living voice helped bring this inanimate history to life. Unlike Shershow's, this history contains the voice of both appropriator and appropriated, the puppeteer and non-puppeteer. It is not a history of fleeting references, but of communities and individuals dedicated to the long term practical and theoretical ramifications of puppetry. And yet finding the means to accurately present forty years of untold history, collecting and using oral histories from a disparate community of individuals, creates its own problems of infiltration and appropriation. Throughout history the puppeteer appears as a lone performer, someone finding a way to share and control his or her story. Even more generally speaking, the puppeteer's job is to convince. The individuals partly responsible for the living and retelling of this history, then, have all made money from the art of convincing and a good audience member buys into the illusion. Equipped with a Dictaphone and Camera the historian has the security to be immersed and convinced each time. But when the 'archive' is a 'living-breathing actor', the historian's ability to direct becomes all the more palpable. Fueled with a sense of legitimacy and sensitivity to dates, I listened out for overarching narratives and notions of community. Despite the fear it will strike in the hearts and minds of all supposedly scientifically rigorous historians, I would like to call the research process 'organic'. Retrieving an oral history helps reveal the 'event-like' nature at the heart of doing history. Interviews are 'events', full of subjectivities, which in the hope of appearing objective, the writer of history rarely allows time for.

Chris Somerville, John Blundall, Stephen Mottram and Penny Francis are the names of those I listened to: Each gave their permission for me to use their words in this thesis.