What are Puppet Theatre Buildings For?

Who was in the group: Sean Myatt (co-convener), Nic Hopkins (co-convener), Peter Glanville, Ronnie Le Drew, Nina Watson, Steve Tiplady, two helpful, late joining Bees

Thoughts reflecting experiences:

+ "A living room to take tea with puppeteers and puppets"
+ "A magnet for interest" - newcomers and established performers; other theatre directors/producers wanted puppetry input or partnerships
+ A great track record in introducing, training, developing puppeteers (LAT, NPT), giving them work (sometimes pay!) and the evidence is the long list of alumni
+ Infrastructure for the puppetry community:
- training
- experimentation
- rehearsal
- performance space
- audience venue
- potential centre (recognition, support, advice, endorsement, development, collaboration) for excellence (standards, resources, help, making sure the novice does credit to the art form ("maybe the three chord band can compose a masterpiece"))

+ Specialist as well as General Facilities
- base for regular puppeteers and makers and their skills and experience
- a place to experience the liveness of puppetry and do your apprenticeship - techniques and artifacts
- the basics for learning stagecraft and stage management - by making the tea, and learning on the job
- lights, flies, staging, green rooms, technicians and technical ware, music and sound, props and wardrobe
- special stuff
-- puppets, and objects
-- bridges and trenches
-- focus on the small stage
-- special lighting
-- facilities to engage very young audiences
-- workshops, tools, more tools, models, examples, materials, support and know-how, makers

Thoughts about opportunities and maybe some risks

+ Place to develop audiences, and maybe take risks
+ Place to develop partnerships - artistic, funding, sponsors, education and outreach, heritage

+ What about The (lost or potentially disappearing) History of British Puppetry? Risks of distraction with archiving and storage but maybe
- Collaborate with museum sector
- educational and heritage and legacy performances - for touring

+ Join up some thinking: All/How many building based companies? Plus Puppet Centre Trust, Unima, others ...
- Share in providing a base for the raised profile of puppetry - how to find out/see more
- Share in sustaining/growing the infrastructure for puppeteers, makers, related arts and artists
- Share in making the case for funding the infrastructure the art form needs, despite government reluctance to put money into (more) arts buildings (London)
-- never mind the damage to the puppetry underneath
-- never mind the damage to the pipeline of puppet theatre alumni

The good, the bad and the ugly of Children's Theatre
- programmes that ARE funded
- accessible to the very young (yes but what is the best design for theatre for children especially the very young: does it marry up with puppetry)
- if you keep on like this how are we going to get adult puppetry taken seriously
- all children's theatre should be puppet or object based?

+ The Boundaries of Centres
- Types and styles of making
- Types and styles of directing/performance
- Don't building based companies have to specialise at least a bit, depending on their skills and artistic policy?
- Centres of excellence - as Centres for puppeteers or other a theatre directors - may not to provide access to the whole range ofmodels and approaches

Then we went to ask the puppeteers group what they thought - as suggested by a bee!