Mary Pollard looks at the spaces that have filled her 2025
As we do this time every year, we get our team to look back at the year just gone. It’s a great chance to really take stock of just what we’ve done in the last twelve months, something we maybe don’t do enough when our focus for the rest of the year is looking at what is coming next.
Today is the turn of Mary Pollard, not just our Head Editor, but also a major advocate for both Theatre for Young Audiences and puppetry. So join Mary as she looks at the spaces, both physical and metaphorical, that helped shape her 2025.
Thinking about my work at ET in 2025, I’ve been reflecting on spaces – ones into which I’ve had the privilege of being invited, ones through which creatives we’ve supported have transitioned, and ones in which the intangible or impossible has been made believable.
I’ve been given some unique opportunities, including stepping onto the marionette bridge at Little Angel Theatre on the occasion of its celebration of marionette puppetry, in collaboration with Curious School of Puppetry, back in July. This saw the theatre archiving some of the exceptional, handpainted backdrops that have been hanging in situ since its earliest productions in the 1960s. A former temperance hall reimagined into what was to become one of the leading puppetry companies in Britain, Little Angel is today celebrated worldwide and one of only a handful of spaces in the UK that can host long-stringed marionette performance. With marionette making having now made it onto the Heritage Crafts’ Red List of endangered crafts, LAT’s workshops are vital to helping keep the artform alive.
More virtually, my ET inbox has been the space for some real highs, not least of these being a trio of ‘Basils’: interviews with globally renowned puppeteers Basil Twist (puppet designer for Totoro) and Basil Jones (of Handspring Puppet Company who created War Horse), and additionally with the legendary Basil Brush. Undeniably in the company of greatness there.
It’s always fabulous to be able to support creatives at fringe venues and then see them go on to excel in high level, mainstream spaces. I interviewed puppeteer Aya Nakamura about her work at Downham Library in Lewisham where she was developing an extraordinary ‘live manga’ piece, Akutagawa, that fused Japanese Kamishibai paper storytelling with live performance and projection. Only a few weeks later I was to talk to her again, this time about the exceptional version of Pinocchio that she performed at the world’s most famous theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe. What a journey – and ET was right there seeing it happen in real time!
A theatre space can be filled with so much more than just spoken words. Josephine Burton’s beautifully understated The Reckoning at Arcola Theatre gently shifted the audience into action by sharing sensory understanding with victims of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It blurred the boundaries of fiction with fact, elucidating understanding of the human impact of war using storytelling alongside sensory and cultural knowledge of those impacted, before the act of sharing food created during the performance subtly changed the audience from passive spectators to active participants in the struggle together.
Achieving a similarly enlightening result through quite different means, Dimanche, presented by Compagnie Focus & Chaliwaté at Peacock Theatre as part of MimeLondon, was an entirely wordless show that screamed loudly of the dangers of ignoring climate change until you couldn’t help but hear. This flawlessly performed story of people determinedly refusing to acknowledge the danger they are in juxtaposed hilariously playful physical theatre with brutal fact, to absolutely chilling effect.
But perhaps the most unique production I saw this year was Hopeful Monsters at the ever-delightful Well Walk Theatre. This exquisitely intoxicating puppetry show used only hands to innovatively conjure an entire world of improbable creatures, delivering a breathtaking capsule that included all the things we need to survive as humans: imagination, growth, collaboration, joy, amazement and above all new possibility. It returns this spring so do not miss it.
It seems now that the only space left for me to consider is The Space itself, which I am yet to make it to but which is definitely on my list – here’s hoping I get there in the New Year! To infinity (or the Isle of Dogs) and beyond!
