Happy World Puppetry Day!
As we are celebrating this special day today, we wanted to take a moment and look at our incredible journey with puppeteering.
Out of the Deep Blue webseries ‘Make your own puppet’
We have started our adventure with creating some special puppeteering workshop series which was made in response to the national lockdown in the UK. We have introduced you all to the ‘Make Your Own Puppet’ series on our YouTube channel, where we worked with 5 puppeteering each designing their own puppet.
Out of the Deep Blue
Let’s not forget about our main character here at AutinDT – EKO.
Eko started out as a little rascal designed by Mr Cleaver’s Monsters and was brought to life by Ben Thompson.
Slowly Eko evolved into the Giant Sea Monster as you all know him today, and became a main character of our show Out of the Deep Blue – a mid-scale outdoor performance featuring a 13 foot Eko and a contemporary dancer, inspired by the themes of the climate emergency and the biodiversity crisis.
‘The Flock’
We are currently partnering with Birmingham Arts School in collaboration with Bellfield Infant School, Bellfield Junior School and Longwill School for Deaf Children on a celebratory project which will explore community, migration, home, and inclusivity.
Lead by Creative Director Johnny and Deaf performing artist Billy Read, supported by Stephanie Bentley.
The school pupils are working together over exploring movement, dance and puppetry skills.
Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games’ Opening Ceremony
Outside of our regular work, our creative director Johnny Autin was involved in many other puppeteering projects, such as “giant puppets” for Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games’ Opening Ceremony, where alongside a team of 16 puppeteers he directed a performance at Alexander Stadium 🏟 , Perry Barr, in front of around 35,000 people and broadcast to an estimated global audience of one billion.
Tales from Acorn Woods Live
Our Creative Director took on a role as a Puppet Director for this production of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s best selling books performed and co-produced by Birmingham Hippodrome and is still currently touring UK!
