Interview: Carving out a future for puppetry

Oliver Hymans on Little Angel Theatre’s Children’s Puppet Festival

Little Angel Theatre is busy, busy, busy gearing up for their third Annual Children’s Puppet Festival, filled with shows, workshops and activities. This year their current design trainee, Gisela Mulindwa, will be staging her first ever professional production, The Tortoise and the Firefly, as part of the programme! With so much to find out about we went straight to Oliver Hymans, LAT’s Associate Director, to get the lowdown.

Oliver, thanks for taking the time to chat today. This is the third Puppet Festival you have curated – what has the response to it been as it’s grown?

Audiences absolutely love it – it’s a chance to experience a wide variety of puppetry styles, each told in fresh and unexpected ways. One of the most exciting things is that the Festival has brought in people who’ve never been to Little Angel Theatre before, which is a huge win for us!

It’s been fantastic to welcome such a broad mix of visiting companies from across the UK – and occasionally from abroad – and to see our stages come alive with work that’s quite different from what we usually present. The Festival gives us the chance to platform new and emerging talent alongside more established names, and to celebrate the full spectrum of puppetry.

We receive a huge number of applications each year through our open call, and we’re always on the lookout for bold, original work. If you’ve got something you think would be a good fit for a future festival, we’d love to hear from you!

The Festival always offers an amazing variety of entertainment across age groups, can you tell us about some of the highlights this year?

It’s hard to pick just a few highlights because every show brings something completely unique to the table. We’re really pushing the boundaries of what a puppet can be – take Escape from the Bubble Tub by the brilliant Paris Bubbles, for example. It’s inventive, unexpected, and brings bubbles to life in magical ways! We’re also thrilled to be hosting Australian comedy duo The Listies with their wonderfully chaotic show Make You LOL. It’s packed with high-energy silliness and, of course, a few puppets thrown in for good measure.

Personally, I’m really excited to be bringing marionette puppetry back to our stage with The Pigeon and the Peacock. As you may know, marionette-making was added to Heritage Crafts’ Red List of Endangered Crafts in 2023 – and sadly, it’s still there in 2025. So this is not just a beautiful show, it’s also a celebration of a rare and important tradition.

Beyond that, expect brilliant storytelling, beautifully crafted puppet designs, and a wide range of musical styles. There really is something for everyone!

So one of the shows – The Tortoise and the Firefly – has been created by Gisela, your puppetry design intern. Can you tell us about the intern programme and why it’s important?

Our intern programme is pretty unique – as far as we know, it’s the only year-long puppetry design traineeship in the UK.

The way we see it, puppetry needs fresh talent to keep evolving, so we’re trying to create proper opportunities for people who are serious about making this their career. It’s not just about learning skills for a year: we’re looking for people with that passion for the craft and a commitment to exploring it as a long term option.

It’s tough out there though. Proper training opportunities in puppetry are getting rarer, especially with all the funding cuts. That’s why we think programmes like this matter so much. Witnessing the calibre of work that emerging artists like Gisela can produce when given proper training and mentorship reaffirms the value of investing in new talent.

How was Gisela selected to receive this incredible opportunity, working with Little Angel who have such a superb reputation for producing outstanding work?

We’ve designed the traineeship to give as much full and practical experience as possible to individuals who have shown the most potential for growth. Right from the start, trainees gets to watch the previous year’s Festival, then spend the next 12 months getting properly stuck in – gaining hands-on experience across a wide range of shows produced at Little Angel Theatre and also external puppet design commission.

We wanted to end the year with something special – a chance for the trainee to put what they’ve learned into practice by creating their own piece as part of the Festival line-up. They’re supported every step of the way by our brilliant team – across design, technical and production – so they get a real understanding of what it takes to make a show from start to finish. That includes everything from writing performer contracts to directing and designing the piece itself.

It’s a big ask for someone just finishing their first year in the industry, but we see it as an amazing opportunity – a chance to create a first portfolio project and take their first big step as a freelance maker in the sector.

Your previous intern, Ash Appadu, has just completed his first year in industry. What has that involved and how has their internship been beneficial?

We’re really proud of everything Ash has achieved in just a year and a half since finishing their traineeship with us. Right after the programme, he landed his first big gig — designing puppets for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on stage. Then, in September 2024, Ash and I were selected for the incredible Homo Faber Fellowship, a seven-month programme where Ash trained under myself, a master artisan in marionette making. The fellowship kicked off with a month in Venice, where Ash got hands-on business training in the craft sector, and wrapped up with two collaborative pieces that were showcased at Milan Design Week. It was such an amazing experience — not just for Ash, but for myself and Little Angel Theatre, too, helping to raise the profile of puppetry in the wider craft and design world.

Now, Ash is freelancing full-time, and we’re thrilled to keep bringing him on board for Little Angel Theatre projects whenever we can!

And what does the future look like for Ash and Gisela as a puppetry designer and creator?

The future looks bright — but of course, not without its challenges! Puppetry is having a real moment right now, with growing interest in live performance and handmade craftsmanship. That means exciting opportunities for Ash as a designer and creator — especially with the incredible skills and the experience he’s gained so far.

That said, like everyone in the arts, he’ll face the usual hurdles: funding cuts, rising costs, and the constant hustle to secure projects. But Ash has already proven how talented and adaptable he is — landing big jobs, thriving on the international stage, and even co-creating pieces for Milan Design Week and London Craft Week. With that kind of drive and creativity, there’s no doubt he’ll carve out an amazing career in puppetry.

For now, we’re just thrilled to keep collaborating whenever we can and can’t wait to see what he, and Gisela, does next!

Thanks very much to Oliver for updating us on the forthcoming Festival and for this unique insight into the world of puppetry design.

The Little Angel Children’s Puppet Festival 2025 runs from Monday 28 July to Sunday 31 August.