2016

We began the year by completing the SYT project with a puppetry piece inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in March. Alongside this, Matt was designing and making the set and puppet for Intrepid Ensemble’s Jellyfish.

In the middle of March we started our second tour of CELL funded again by Arts Council England, it was great to get Ted out on the road again, especially for our visit to Germany for Recklinghausen Fringe Festival. We were also delighted to be accepted onto the Oxford Playhouse’s Evolve Programme, providing a year of support and mentoring, and as we decided to start an entirely new show, it was a brilliant time to have them on board. Funded by Arts Council England, we began working on Flux, with our first female lead character and a predominantly female cast.

In the summer our lovely fisherman Alf had some work to do, we took In Our Hands to the Edinburgh Fringe and got a string of 4 and 5 star reviews, Matt was even interviewed for a feature in the Scottish Times. After a short break we toured the show to 18 venues across England, with 5 post show talks, 3 workshops and 20 shows in total. To round off the year we took our two big outdoor puppets, Xalia and Atom, to help with the Christmas Lights switch on in Oxford, it was a really great end to a busy year, working with some of our lovely associate artists and a handful of volunteers.