Todd and I arrange to meet in a couple of weeks to finish the interview, as he has to complete filming on the latest series of a BBC children's program called The Queen's Nose, in which he performs a talking ferret puppet. This time when we meet I remember my walking boots. Todd takes me to Fernworthy Forest, out towards the open Moor, heading for Grey Weathers — two large circles of standing stones, which Todd likes to call "the Earth Mother's bra". I ask him to talk about the interstitial aspects of his works — the ways that he brings the skills he developed in film and television production to creating live theatrical events.
"Ultimately, a puppet is simply a tool for telling a story," Todd says, "whether it's a sophisticated creature created for film, or a sock puppet on the end of your hand. I use that tool to connect with the audience, to take them on a journey through a tale. In the society we live in, people are used to television — close shots, wide shots, mid shots and cutting between characters. So to have a small puppet forty feet away from a live audience and expect them to follow the story, it doesn't always work. It can work sometimes in straight theatre, when people choose to suspend their disbelief and go with it, but for something more visual and interstitial, where you are mixing poetry and prose and dance and music and acrobatics, I like the effect of using large–scale puppets. I create actual creatures for live performances that are ten to fifteen feet high or in one case, 42ft long. And then of course there is projection, where all that counts is the size of the screen!
"Of course, if an actual puppet is that big, it needs to be light and easy to manipulate, and ultimately you, the performer, are creating the effect of its character. You hope your audience comes with you as you perform, because it's very much a dialogue between them and you — unlike TV, with which an audience can be more passive, carried along by the use of camera angles and sound. You can't let them remain passive when you're performing on stage — you have to grab their attention, stir up their sense of wonder and belief, and take them with you on the creative journey."
Todd tends not to utilise minute manipulation, so expertly used by the puppeteers of China or India, for example. That's not to say he can't bring a puppet to life with the deftest of touches, but what he attempts to do, through the use of large–scale puppets and elaborate costumes, is to tell stories through more exaggerated imagery and movement.
"People here in Britain are just not open to small, intricate puppet performances," he says. "Whenever I've been to puppet festivals, most of the audience is made up of other puppeteers. So I tend to go for the bigger approach, bringing in performers from a number of different fields, not just puppeteers. I'm able to reach wider audiences that way. Plus, there's something special that's created when you go beyond a single discipline and bring many kinds of artists together. For my Rhino Drum Show, which was an outdoor performance that toured across the country — to places like the Edinburgh Festival, the Virgin Festivals, Glastonbury, and the Green Gathering — we had puppeteers on stilts, acrobats on ropes, dancers, fire throwers, and some of the finest African musicians in Britain, all combining their skills in a performance spectacle about African wildlife conservation. It was thrilling to watch that synergy happen, creating a kind of performance art that's hard to categorize or explain, but is thrilling and moving to watch. We had that 'ahhhhh' I wanted from the audience, and we had them up on their feet and dancing too.
"I love that moment when people are dancing together to one rhythm, audience and performers alike. Egos seem to disappear, and there's a sense of oneness. You can change things in that moment. Educate people about an issue like conservation, or simply wake them to the extraordinary beauty of the world. That is what so much of what I do is about: changing things. Art can allow people to open up, and once they're open, you can make them see that it is in their power to make a difference."
But what are the special challenges involved in creating works that cross the borders between puppetry and other kinds of art? "Funding can be harder to raise. Arts Councils and other sponsors want to know what you are: puppeteers? Dancers? Musicians? Storytellers? A circus act? They don't necessarily want to hear: ‘All of the above, and more.’ This kind of work is hard to categorize — and categorization is sometimes insisted upon by people who fund, or book, or review performance arts. But what I love about working this way is how things spark when you bring people from different fields together. I like to mix things up. I like to get musicians up on stilts and costume makers into the costumes, and to give people a chance to do things they never thought they could do. Even if in their next job they go back to their own field, I think they bring new ideas back with them after experimenting and crossing a few borders."
Todd's live performance work has taken him to Thailand, were he designed enormous puppets and taught movement skills for a production outside the Royal Palace in Bangkok, and to Arizona, where he created performance characters for a "faery festival" based on the art of Brian and Wendy Froud. "That was a lot of fun," Todd says. "We had these great spring-loaded stilts and we knew we could do something really good with them. I thought it would be great to meld a ‘faery godmother’ character with the panto dame — Monty Python's Terry Jones with Hilda Brackett. Big bosoms, big dress and a wimple to hide my ugly mug! And bloomers covering the stilts. I flounced around the festival giving faery blessings to large American men! It worried some of them, hugely, which is just what I wanted to do."
More recently, he has helped to organize a performance skills school in Cornwall, and he has started up his own company to explore new puppeteering techniques for film. He's also developing another of his border–crossing projects — this one putting puppetry and acrobatics at the service of orchestral music by Hilary Tan (an acclaimed Welsh composer who is also Todd's cousin), and drawing in Celtic myth, poetry, and storytelling as well. In addition to all this, he's working on the new feature film of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a project he has a particular emotional connection to because the late Douglas Adams was a friend of his. They'd walked across Africa together, with Todd in a rhino costume, to raise money for the Save the Rhino charity...but that's a story for another day...
Eventually Todd and I reach Grey Weathers. As we look out across Dartmoor, I feel I now understand Todd's passion. It is not simply the performing of puppets that drives him; more, it is the telling of stories, leaving an impression, making a difference, that lights his fire.
"When a puppet starts weaving its magic," he says "and you see the audience believe it is alive, and you know they are with you totally, hungry for the tale to unfold,then the feeling is extraordinary. Everything I strive for makes sense, and it is a privilege to be a performer."
Contributor's Notes: Guy Cracknell is a journalist and graphic designer in Devon, England. He has published an acclaimed series of articles about artists in the Dartmoor region in Devon Today magazine, and is at work on a children's novel. Two of his articles are available online: one on the music/dance troupe Daughters of Elvin, which takes an interstitial approach to performing medieval music, and one on the Anglo–Norwegian fiber artist Yuli Sömme. Guy lives in Exeter with his wife and two sons.
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