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A Girl Called Grace

Emma Milton, a Scottish based puppeteer discusses her show A Girl Called Grace.

Gareth K Vile: What is it about puppetry that encourages you to use it to make performance?

Puppetry is magic, bringing an inanimate object to life. Puppetry is challenging, requiring an audience to suspend their belief and believe in a character and it allows us to think about or investigate all subjects effectively and safely. 

Technically it requires focus, practice and learned skill. I love making things and as a theatre form it is the one that you can make everything because you can create a world and characters that do not exist yet, often on a small enough scale that requires one or only a few people. 

Puppeteers are generous, keen to help each other and share their skills, knowledge, friendship and passion. 

Children engage well with puppets and feel empowered making their own or interacting with one or can recognise some of what a puppet deals with. The direct nature of puppet communication is often like how a child communicates, they follow their feelings, desires and importantly they follow their bodies-leaping, embracing, teasing and expressing themselves totally. 

I need to create, and sometimes it becomes a story which I need to share. I have learned about puppets and puppetry because it makes sense to me and so I use it to communicate with others. 

I am looking to create relationships and share thoughts and feelings. Originally it was not to feel lonely: now it’s to create connection. Do I hide behind the puppet, yes, but they also allow me to be present and create a shared version of our world.

Do you see your work in any kind of tradition, or are there artists that you would call peers (or have influenced you)?

Jim Henson is an inspiration, Fieke Boschma a wonderful marionette player: Fred Delftgrauw and Neville Tranter are extraordinary in their puppetry. Franki Anderson, Victor Frankl , Julia Cameron and my two sons have enabled me to create from a healthy place.  I have a collection of puppeteer friends in Holland who I am proud to know and have worked with. 

I was very fortunate to get some awesome chances to learn this trade.

I was and am fascinated by puppetry and worked for a puppet maker and learned some techniques of making. It is a wonderful world. I made puppets or rather dolls when I moved to Holland as I was lonely,  then when I was looking for work I wandered into  a Marionette theatre whilst they were changing scenes and witnessed the magic of wooden people serenely and elegantly flying. I asked to work there and so began my fascination. 

What puppets are you working with at the moment?

My puppets for my current show are similar in style and form to the lonely dolls I started with more than 30 years ago. My witch is a glove puppet.

Ralph is a puppet made of Papier Mâché, cord, fabric and weights. He is manipulated with two sticks. One is a wooden spoon and the other a piece of bamboo. He works well with children and has an excellent sense of fun. 

Ralph’s form is inspired by the ancient Italian Puppets which had one stick to the head and were weighted accordingly to mimic human movement through the puppeteer's use of rhythmic action. My current puppets now are fimo and cord and ping pong balls and cork.

And do you have influences beyond puppetry?

I am also influenced by traditional tales, storytelling, fooling and Comedia del arte and psychology and by the children I work with. 

I have many influences, puppeteers, actors, Illustrators, film directors, authors, artists, playwrights, musicians and theatre groups that I was fortunate to see. 

What kind of response do you get from audiences for the puppets?

Laughter, tenderness, recognition, admiration, singing along, rooting for one (empathy) and booing for the other (disapproval). My audience saw my puppets as living characters in a dramatic story. They believed, we believed.

• ‘Grace was wonderful’
• ‘Grace had escaped. Baba Yaga is furious’
• I loved every minute of the show. It had so many lovely touches and it was great seeing you interact with the live audience. Loved when Grace needed help to go on her journey and  walked across the kids’ hand in the front row and loved when the little bit of blue ribbon became a huge enchanted river with the blue silk material. totally absorbing performance. 
• I am liked that you did not chose the norm choice of characters’
• ‘Superb performance’
• ‘that was brilliant’
• ‘we had a great time, well done’