Pulling strings to put puppetry on the map in region

Thought to have first been used about 30,000 years ago, puppets have been used since the earliest times to animate and communicate the ideas and needs of human societies. Wire- controlled, articulated puppets made of clay and ivory have also been found in Egyptian tombs.

The oldest written record of puppetry can be found in the written records of Xenophon dating from around 422 BC. Devotees of puppetry – and there are many around the globe – call it an art both ancient and modern, because it has been around so long but is also being reinvented all the time in the light of current technology.

Two of the West End’s biggest smashes of recent years, The Lion King and War Horse, the story of a boy and the beloved horse that’s taken away to serve with the cavalry in the First World War, were only made possible by the imaginative use of animal puppetry. It’s all about animating inanimate objects and using them to tell stories believably.

Around Europe there is a lively festival scene that showcases the work of puppet theatre companies and puppet makers. Here in the UK there’s less going on in terms of big events, with just one regular festival in London and another in Scotland, but the biannual Skipton International Puppet Festival, taking place from Friday to Sunday this week, has earned itself a “must see” place on the calendar.

It was started in 2005 by local couple Liz and Daniel Lempen, who’ve run Lempen Puppet Theatre in the town for 25 years He’d grown up in a Swiss ski village and became an actor. Liz was a fine artist, and they met at a puppetry summer school in Grassington. They later moved from Sheffield to Skipton and based their company there, performing both locally in theatres and schools, nationally and internationally with puppets made from an array of materials, including simple shadow puppets to highly intricate carved wooden models and everything in between. The Festival began with 20 ticketed events at various venues like school halls. It was a sell-out, as was the 2007 event, when the Lempens created a canalside festival hub marquee as the focal point for the three days. Each successive festival has got bigger (there are now 38 ticketed indoor events 40 free street shows), and they’ve been staged with the help of both Arts Council funding and sponsorship from a long list of other arts organisations, councils and local companies.

“There’s only a certain size that a town like can take, so we’re trying to keep the Festival at its current scale so that it doesn’t take over the whole place,“ says Daniel. “It has become economically more and more important, and in 2009 brought in 8,000 visitors.

“It’s great to add to Skipton’s profile but also to have a festival that helps to put the UK more firmly on the map as a centre for the art form.

“We have puppet companies coming from all over Europe and the UK, and people who work in the puppet world come just to see it all and to meet the companies who perform here.”

Puppets will be paraded through the centre of town at noon on Sunday for all to enjoy. While puppetry might remain “fringey” it’s also an interesting and intimate art form, says Lempen.

“We would never perform in a large venue. The biggest we use in the Festival has a house of 130. Our own company specialises in telling original stories, so we don’t take stories from folklore. Liz makes the puppets, and we produce the shows with the help of a director. “

Their latest show is a work called Ugly Beauty, which explores perceptions of beauty through the story of a troubled princess who wears a mask to hide her looks and is helped by a one-legged musician. Also on the varied bill are Punch and Judy and their analysis of current events; a show that uses everyday objects like a vacuum cleaner and mop bucket as puppets, Japanese shadow puppets and animations of Grimm’s Fairytales and Edward Lear’s Nonsense. Tickets are ridiculously cheap (from £2.50), but then the Festival isn’t run for profit.

Skipton Puppet Festival September 23-25. www.skiptonpuppetfestival.co.uk Box Office: 07732 877 289