This year, seasoned Fringe-goer Mark Down brings "The Sex Lives of Puppets" to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. This innovative show delves into themes of sex, love, and human nature, all through the unique lens of puppetry. With puppets that have been captivating audiences for over a decade, Mark promises a performance that's as engaging as it is boundary-pushing. Discover the magic behind the puppets and the stories they tell, as we explore Mark's creative process and the unexpected journey that led to this one-of-a-kind production.
Your show explores themes of sex, love and human nature. What was behind your decision to use puppets as a medium to share these stories?
Actually, it was the other way round. The puppets wanted to talk about sex! Some of the puppets in the show have been around for over 12 years and have performed in a variety of shows we made including Public Health and Safety with Nigel Mound, The Puppet Monologues, Howie's Showbiz Memoires, and Citizen Puppet which was at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2015 (it won a Fringe First). After Citizen Puppet they felt they still had stuff to say so we took them back into the rehearsal room and found out that they really came alive when they talked about sex. As we all do! The show developed from there. Puppets don't really do small talk - they like to get to the heart of things.
Can you tell us a bit about how you design and make your puppets?
Well these puppets began from the first idea of just making puppets with moving mouths. We wanted to look for a way of doing that that was different from Muppets (where you put your hand inside the head). I always work with a puppet maker and Nick Barnes who I was working with then made the first one with a mechanism that controlled the mouth from the back of the head. The heads are sculpted from Styrofoam covered in plaster. So that was step one.
Then we set about trying different kinds of bodies for them, and different costumes, until we had some looks that we loved. That is really a process of styling them until you get them right. That is where the character starts to develop. We found they looked really great with smaller than real bodies.
Over the next ten years lots of people had a go at making heads and bodies so we had an odd collection of finished, half finished, and barely started puppets at the beginning of rehearsals of Sex Lives of Puppets. We worked with puppet maker Russell Dean from Strangeface to finish them off and make them into a company. It was really organic process, and he worked alongside us rehearsals and responded to how the puppets worked as we discovered what they wanted to say. He did a great job!
How does being on stage behind a puppet compare to performing on stage as yourself?
Actually it isn't very different. Doing puppetry is a bit like getting into character. At the beginning of the show, we come on stage and confront the audience directly as ourselves (sort of!) and this is really important to make a connection with the audience. We are getting into character "as puppeteers". If we don't do that it can feel a bit weird, and we feel cut off from the audience. Then we pick up a puppet and go into the scenes. We still have to be alert to what is happening in the room, to focus, to listen, to remember our lines and all that stuff.
The only real differences are technical things that we have to practise. The puppets have to "do" the performances, so we need to know how they work. A bit like playing a musical instrument. For example, to make the puppets look like they are talking, we have to open their mouths before they speak, that kind of thing. For a more detailed account you can read all about how to do it in my book "A Practical Guide To Puppetry" which is available wherever you usually buy your puppet books! (er... Amazon)
Do you think as a society we will ever move past the taboo of openly talking about sex?
I really hope so! I have found from making this show that in a safe environment people love to talk about sex. When we started I was worried that people would be triggered by the conversations and we had one rule, if people were uncomfortable we would stop. In fact, mostly we found people loved talking about it.
I also have a feeling that the younger generations are getting better at talking about sex. They seem to me to be much more confident, open, frank than I was (am!), so that makes me hopeful.
This show probably comes from my own discomfort about talking about sex. If the show has a message (and mostly it's just a fun, funny show) it would be that we should embrace the embarrassment, lean into it as people say these days, and talk about sex more. Otherwise, we'll just go on fumbling around in the dark.
And if you don't want to talk about your own sex lives, let's at least talk about the sex lives of puppets.
You have explored many different themes over the years with puppetry, do you have any ideas for what you’ll tackle next?
Yes I do actually - we're going to make a show about "gravity". We are working on a new show with the Scottish Ensemble called "The Law of Gravity". It is a collaboration between a life sized, 3-person operated puppet ballet dancer and a string sextet. It will be an exploration of two pieces of music - Phillip Glass's 3rd Symphony and Schoebnerg's Transfigured Night and puppet ballet. It's going to be quite different from Sex Lives. I don't know what it is yet but I am very excited to find out. We will perform it for the first time in Manipulate Festival at the Traverse Theatre in Feb 2025. Book now to avoid disappointment!
The Sex Lives of Puppets will be performed at 21:30 at the Pleasance Courtyard (Beyond) from 31st July – 25th August (not 7th or 14th)
Booking Link: https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/sex-lives-puppets
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