No strings attached | 10 Mins with Sam Wilde - puppetry designer

Samuel Wilde has been making weird and wonderful objects come to life for as long as he can remember. But what is the role of a Puppetry Designer? We grabbed ten minutes with him to find out..

Hi Sam! First question:

How do you approach a project like this – what are the steps?

I make a real effort to make each project different, to take different steps, to find a new way in each time, like trying to find a new hook to hang the work on. Finding that hook is always the first step I guess. 

How you find that hook is the tricky bit, there are loads of ways to get started, sketching is useful (although as a bit of a anxious drawer it’s never my first move!), finding references and resources, trips to the museum or art gallery, there’s always lots of talking and chatting with the other creatives about the project. This project has some of the most amazing people I’ve ever worked with, chatting with Blanche, Hannah, Sonali, Nao, you can’t help but being inspired when you’re surrounded with some of the most exciting people you’ve ever met, you just have to ask questions and try and tap into some of their wonderfulness! That’s all I try to do, surround myself with talented people and work hard to try and deserve my place on the team. 

I try and start making things as quickly as I can, grab a cardboard box and start having a play. Play is really important, play and making loads of mistakes! 

Then you have to gather the practical requirements, how long have you got? How many hands? (I find it’s helpful to think of hands rather than people!) how big is the budget? How are the puppets going to fit into the wider show? What do the puppets have to DO? That kind of thing. 

Then you put the chats and discoveries and hooks in a big bowl, add the practical elements, give it a good stir and hopefully you find something beautiful in the stew!  

How does puppetry tie into the story – why is it used?

I guess for me when you read Sonali's amazing script you end up with a bunch of questions: How do you make Scheres' beautiful storytelling visually exciting? How do we make the monsters scary and the heroes impressive? What do we do when the monsters ARE the heroes? How do we tap into the excitement The King feels at this unravelling narratives? How do we make the Horse fun and exciting and DO all the things that it needs to do?

Sonali has taken the story of Arabian nights and beautifully expanded it, she’s zoomed out in the most wonderful way and as an audience member we see not only Schere telling stories to The King, but we see how this imprisonment effects her family, her community, and as the play progresses we see those things effect the story as well. That’s the hook! How do we make these stories, these characters, reflect the community and people from Scheres life outside of the storytelling. You’re left with a bunch more questions, who is Scheres guide and protector? Who is her defender and ferocity? How are these roles shared in single parent family in a tight knit community? How can we illustrate this so it serves the narrative and the storytelling?

You put all of these questions together and, for me, you see that they all have the same answer.. Puppetry (also it’s really fun!)

How did you get into this line of work? Any advice for people who want to do this for a living?

Honestly, I’m not sure how I got to be this lucky, it just sort of evolved through my life! I’ve always made things, I used to make cuddly toys for my little sisters when I was young and StarTrek masks with my Dad. 

When I got into university I found myself surrounded by the most amazing puppetry and makers so I used to try and emulate them. I ended up training and working as a Math Teacher, which didn’t take, so I started teaching youth theatre and ended up training at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School doing an MA in Theatre Design. 

If you want to get into Puppetry, then Bristol is a really great place to be, the city is filled with the most amazing puppet makers, designers and puppeteers! We’ve got Puppet Place, Bath Carnival, Aardman and an army of puppetry expertise, including amazing makers on this show, Hannah Southfield (who is associate puppetry designer), Izzy Bristol, Bryony Harrison-Pettit, Katy Hoste, Ruby Brown, Meriel Pym, Blue Harrison and Jessica Miller! 

Everyone in puppetry is lovely, drop them an email and start a conversation, take part in all the wonderful puppetry classes and workshops the city has to offer, and if all else fails, grab a cardboard box and turn it into something you're proud of, works for me every time. 

Listen to Samuel chatting about the puppetry in Arabian Nights:

Tell us about the characters you’ve made – and who is your favourite?

Honestly, I couldn’t pick, there aren’t a huge amount of puppets in this show (or not a huge amount of characters at least!) and that always makes picking a favourite tricky! 

I had the privilege of working with the amazing Hannah Sibai (Set and Costume) on this, she’s a fantastic collaborator and joy to work with, and we decided very early on that all of the puppets, although they have a shared language, exist and serve a really different purposes in the story. In short all of the puppets are really different, and because of that, like my kids, they are all my favourites!

What are the top tips for making a puppet feel real?

Oh that’s an easy one, ACTORS!! 

Puppetry is a really collaborative discipline, you can spend ages designing the perfect puppet, or spend years building it, working out mechs so that it moves just the way you want it, but if you put it in the hand of someone who doesn’t resonate with it then it will still just be a really expensive, time consuming prop! It takes great puppeteers to make a puppet live. 

Luckily, this show has some of the best! Each of them is incredible and the nature of the puppetry in this is that they are all involved in it at some point, but Saikat Ahamed's work as Horse… wow.. just wow, its a masterclass in an actors perfect subtle genius!

How did you get into this line of work? Any advice for people who want to do this for a living?

Honestly, I’m not sure how I got to be this lucky, it just sort of evolved through my life! I’ve always made things, I used to make cuddly toys for my little sisters when I was young and StarTrek masks with my Dad, when I got into university I found myself surrounded by the most amazing puppetry and makers so I used to try and emulate them. I ended up training and working as a Math Teacher, which didn’t take, so I started teaching youth theatre and ended up training at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School doing an MA in Theatre Design. 

If you want to get into Puppetry, then Bristol is a really great place to be, the city is filled with the most amazing puppet makers, designers and puppeteers! We’ve got Puppet Place, Bath Carnival, Aardman and an army of puppetry expertise, including amazing makers on this show, Hannah Southfield (who is associate puppetry designer), Izzy Bristol, Bryony Harrison-Pettit, Katy Hoste, Ruby Brown, Meriel Pym, Blue Harrison and Jessica Miller!

Everyone in puppetry is lovely, drop them an email and start a conversation, take part in all the wonderful puppetry classes and workshops the city has to offer, and if all else fails, grab a cardboard box and turn it into something you're proud of, works for me every time. 

Anything else you’d like to talk about? 

I really just want to take a moment to really shout the praises of the entire puppetry team on this project, in theatre its easy to think that actors, directors and designers do all the work, and although I don’t want to diminish the hard work that they/we do, it’s also not the whole truth. 

When it comes to puppetry a lot of, most of, the hard work and beauty happens behind the scenes, by teams of talented, dedicated and supportive makers and artists. For this show that’s the AMAZING Hannah Southfield and the INCREDIBLE team she put together and worked with us to deliver the beautiful puppets in this show! None of this happens without them and I am enormously thankful!