My Year at Little Angel Theatre
by Gisela Mulindwa
I completed my design traineeship at Little Angel Theatre from August 2024 to 2025. It was an amazing year surrounded by talented makers, designers and puppets. My journey at Little Angel Theatre started in winter 2023 working as a Visitor Experience Assistant, this meant watching all the shows multiple times a day, becoming obsessed with these puppets thinking about their movement and how they were made. I also began to fall in love with puppetry as an art form and watching how people of all ages were affected by them, from babies to grandparents connecting to the magic of these puppets coming to life before their eyes.
Nearly a year later I was in the workshop beginning my journey and satisfying my curiosity. I was eager and could not believe I had found myself part of the team – lucky to learn from Oliver Hymans, previous Design Trainee Ash Appadu and Design Assistant, Dan Southwell.
Starting out I assisted Ash with a puppet commission for a production of A Christmas Carol. I was humbled quite quickly realising how using the wrong glue could have such a huge impact on the puppets mobility. I was glad to learn these lessons so quickly as we entered the Christmas season working on around 9 shows/commissions. The workshop was full of people and puppets, and I got the chance to meet and work with so many talented freelancers who I would continue to work with throughout the year. During this time, I got a crash course in all the different materials used, getting familiar with things like clear Thermo-Plastic or “Worbla” – which I would come to use later in the year- as well as many techniques, fabrics, glues and machinery in the workshop.
Meanwhile, I had lots of opportunities for independent learning within Little Angel, taking part in the Marionette Carving Course and the Puppetry Foundation Course. Though I came from a stop motion and theatre design background, these courses allowed me to develop my knowledge, not only in making, but the fundamentals of performing with puppets.
I was also working on my own project, which allowed me to focus on the process of making a table-top puppet from the design stage of a technical drawing to building in a mechanism and completing the design. I was able to go into LAT’s studio loft which is essentially a museum of puppets from Little Angel’s past. I felt lucky to have access to the years of puppet making, seeing up close their intricate details.
A large part of the new year at Little Angel was a new show Overheard in a Tower Block. This was an exciting production as it was designed in-house by Oliver and Dan and it was a treat to be able to see and be part of the whole process from start to finish. Adapted from Joseph Coelho’s beautiful poetry, Tower Block led to experimental and visually poetic designs. I worked on making the witch character, using the skills from Christmas. The Witch puppet was built from clear “Worbla” Thermo Plastic and frosty paper mache – this was a unique challenge and took a bit of trial and error. I also got more responsibility on this show making the shadow puppets, from sitting in on rehearsals mocking up possible puppets, to designing them in CAD for laser cutting.
Something unique about this traineeship is the opportunity to make your own show which is given its own run as part of the Children’s Puppetry Festival in August. I came into this without any specific ideas, wanting to see which techniques and types of puppetry I was most drawn to throughout the traineeship. Once we got to the middle of the year my show was no longer a distant thought and I was able to go to the Moving Parts festival in Newcastle for inspiration. This was a deeply enriching trip getting to attend the Manipulating Marionettes Workshop: A New Approach with Stephen Mottram where we learnt about his process and got to operate a range of marionettes with different controls creating very natural movement.
In May I had my first R&D for my festival show, which I had now called: The Tortoise and The Firefly, but the idea was just a small seed at the time. I was gifted a book of African folk tales by a friend and used the storytelling style and themes to build the show. I became attached to the tortoise character, a stubborn, wise and cunning character. I also knew I wanted to play with different scales, leading to the creation of the smaller firefly character. I began writing and finding my collaborators working with Cassiopeia Berkeley-Agyepong who played Firefly, Hannah Akhalu as Tortoise and Esther Kehinde Ajayi doing sound design and live foley performance.
The Tortoise and the Firefly in the Studios was about a stubborn tortoise who lives comfortably under a giant tree by Lake Victoria. One day a great drought begins, and Tortoise is forced to look for a new home. On this journey Tortoise meets a firefly living in his shell. In the beating sun they must learn to help one another and call for the rain.
Making the tortoise puppet was a challenge. I had to think about how to keep the movement slow and controlled while being operated by one person, but with the support of the rest of the team in the design workshop, the grumpy old tortoise was made. For the firefly, the design brought me back to using the clear Worbla, which I designed having a luminous bottom. I gave myself a lot to do as I wanted to play with the scale: when we meet the firefly we go inside the shell of the tortoise and see a zoomed-in version of them both. On top of this technique, I also used shadow puppetry and an overhead projector. We moved through different landscapes and characters, while we followed a smaller string puppet version of tortoise and a finger light firefly.
This show was an amalgamation of everything I had learnt whilst being at Little Angel, from the many different materials, shadow puppetry and string puppet, and daring to make something completely new, experimenting and exploring to find my characters.
The traineeship was an intensive year dedicated to puppet making. I came in with little knowledge about making puppets but the need to follow my curiosity was warmly welcomed. I learnt a great amount leaving with puppetry under my belt and the first draft of a new show. Since my year ended I was able to work on a puppet called Herbert for The Monkey’s Paw at The Hope Theatre in Islington. I have been a Studio Assistant at Es Devlin’s Studio and been back at the Little Angel workshop helping design some shadow puppets for a new commission. In the new year I will be working with Company Three on designing their new festival. The process of making puppets has given me a deep love for the craft as well as theatre making as a whole and I hope to continue exploring and growing my practice.
