Interview: Ten years of puppetry Hijinx

Ben Pettitt-Wade talks touring with Meet Fred

Hijinx theatre company’s acclaimed puppet show Meet Fred celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, and what better way to do that than tour across England and Wales? Containing adult themes and puppet nudity, we wanted to know more about how this production and its insight into support for the disabled still manages to resonate with audiences a decade on. Director Ben Pettitt-Wade kindly popped by to tell us more about it.

Hi Ben. Thanks very much for talking to us about Meet Fred. So it’s been ten years since the production originally launched. Are its themes still resonant today?

Yes, I believe so. One of the reasons we decided to re-tour the show at this time was for this exact thing. A main theme of the production is the impact cuts to benefits have on disabled people. Fred as a puppet lives this experience when his PLA (puppetry living allowance) is cut, leading to him losing one of his puppeteers. Just as it was 10 years ago, once again there is a lot of rhetoric around further cuts to disabled people’s support, so we chose to re-mount this tour to draw attention to that.

What difference does it make telling the story with a puppet as the main character rather than a human being?

It’s a weird thing that audiences tend to feel more empathy for Fred as a puppet then possibly they would do if the character was simply human, I think that is a key difference as they really seem to invest in his struggles. However, we are also able to satirise a lot of the situations in Fred’s life because he is a puppet, which allows us to approach the subject with a healthy dose of dark humour.

Hijinx prides itself on being an inclusive company, but what does that mean in real terms for performing the show?

The show was co-created with learning disabled and/or autistic artists. Now ten years later, we only have one original cast member, but there are three neurodivergent actors in the piece and on the road. The neurodivergent actors play a selection of characters which Fred encounters in his life.

In real terms what the audience experience is no different to any other show, though unfortunately it is still far from common to see learning-disabled artists represented on our professional stages.

However, the expectation from audiences as always is to experience an outstanding piece of theatre and a great night out. That is what we provide.

The work was devised in association with renowned puppetry company Blind Summit. Can you talk a bit about that relationship?

The project started from a workshop which we hosted, led by Blind Summit, back in 2014. In that workshop we learned about their approach to Bunraku (three person) puppetry. That was a seed that led to us ordering our own set of puppets from them and starting to explore the form for ourselves with our artists. Practitioners from Blind Summit then worked with us on some of the puppetry at key stages during the production development to help us really hone our skills. They have been fantastically supportive of the production and we are eternally grateful to them for their generosity in sharing and infecting us with their passion for puppetry.

You’ve toured internationally and are now visiting multiple venues across England and Wales. What are the responses to the production like in different countries?

Luckily the production has received a wonderful reception wherever it has been. I think it has a number of universal themes which help it to translate across cultures – at its heart it is a David vs Goliath type story, and I think that resonates everywhere.

One recent trip was to Japan, and that was a little nerve racking. Bunraku puppetry originated there, but is highly traditional in form; it is actually protected as an art form by UNESCO. The form of Bunraku we use is a long way from traditional form and we really were not sure how it would go down with Japanese audiences, so that first performance there was a complete unknown. Thankfully, as the show progressed we could feel the audience were with us and we started to relax into it – Japanese audiences are famously reserved, but happily at the end of the performance they were super receptive and loved the show, even if the puppetry was so far from the original form: as far as I know we haven’t been reported to UNESCO yet.

Thanks very much to Ben for telling us about what promises to be a fabulous show.

You can Meet Fred at multiple venues across the UK, from Llanelli to Lichfield, until Friday 5 June. ET will be catching the show when it comes to York in early April, so watch out for our review there.