WOOD, YOU BELIEVE IT: Interview with Half A String founder Peter Morton
Half a String director Peter Morton on the puppet scene, five-star reviews at Edinburgh Festival Fringe and performing on top of a van
“What I really love is creating the worlds and the stories…”
The life of an acorn on the forest floor set to a soundtrack of ethereal folk music and thumping drum and bass, or perhaps a space chicken boldly going where no poultry has gone before… the creative and interactive storytelling of Canterbury production company Half a String has seen them tour the country as well as earn five-star reviews from their sell-out shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
From their workshop on the outskirts of Canterbury, the small team, headed up by founder Peter Morton, are helping to put the art of puppetry firmly back on the live performance agenda. But this isn’t Thunderbird-style marionettes, or the mayhem of the Muppets - it’s modern, original shows that captivate children and enthral adults with stunning handcrafted characters. Puppets are back.
“For me, the West End started it with Avenue Q and War Horse,” says Peter. “That put puppetry at the centre of the West End and, publicly, it’s quite interesting as I think that’s led into now, where there’s a lot of anime. My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away - massive productions. It’s all really cool work that’s going on. I don’t know if we are in a peak or a trough, but there’s definitely a scene out there looking for it.”
Peter started playing with puppets from an early age but headed to the University of Kent to take drama and theatre studies with the idea of becoming an actor.
“I think I did one audition and went ‘No, I don’t want to be an actor. This is horrible!’”
Taking to the university workshop, Peter honed his skills in creating characters and sets alongside manager Sam Westbury, who is known for making props for the likes of Disney, Madame Tussauds, Damien Hirst and the Star Wars film The Phantom Menace.
“He’s brilliant, I spent a lot of time with him learning different techniques, and then it’s just been trial and error with puppets,” says Peter. “I loved War Horse, which was just coming out of the National at the time, and I’ve always liked to kind of build things out of wood, and then it’s actually quite fun to build things that move. It’s a lot more exciting than building something that’s just like a statue, essentially.”
Working and touring with production company Little Cauliflower while still studying, Peter got a good grounding in what to do and perhaps a little of what not to do in running a production company.
“I really learned a lot from them, like how to make work and market it and that kind of stuff but also capturing an audience with a puppet that moves more naturalistically.”
Anyone who has seen a Half a String production will know that making the puppet and the scenery feel alive is central to the creative process.
“What I really love is creating the worlds and the stories and just being in that process from start to finish,” says Peter. “The way I describe our rehearsals is that we’re making a big stew and we’re all putting bits in and having ideas or stirring that and creating this thing at the end.”
Working with a raft of writers, performers, puppeteers, illustrators and musicians, each production is wholly unique, with every element created specifically for the show.
Half a String’s first production A Heart at Sea was launched in April 2016 in a secret garden in Canterbury and went on to have a sold-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2017 before taking home a number of awards. But it is arguably their more recent production Breathe that has really caught the imagination of a wider audience.
AND BREATHE…
Created during the Covid era, Breathe is an extraordinary journey through a busy forest, with a story told from the perspective of an acorn on the hectic forest floor. The audience sees the inner workings of trees, all beautifully realised through a combination of puppetry, detailed sets and even live camera work and big-screen projection. It is underscored through a blend of thumping drum and bass and live ethereal folk songs.
“We started with online rehearsals and then we were doing socially distanced rehearsals, and eventually, about a year later, we launched it at bOing! Festival 2022,” says Peter. “We’ve been touring it ever since.”
This summer saw another sold-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe in The Pleasance Dome, bagging multiple five-star reviews. A large proportion of the 900-odd shows that appear at the festival is either stand-up comedy or monologue-based theatre, like Baby Reindeer or Fleabag.
“Monologue is affordable for venues, whereas we’re up there with a company, puppets, projection and music,” says Peter. “But I think that’s why we did so well, because we stuck out from the rest of the programme - there were only two live-action puppetry shows.
“Mainly our work is family-based, but we had 90% adults in our audience. It’s very much for the whole family to enjoy. We don’t want to have children at the front while parents are at the back, texting. We want to have everyone watching and sharing it together.”
So far there have been 112 performances of the show, with more than 10,000 audience members, while the team have also sold more than 600 books that accompany the show - allowing parents and children to relive the story back at home. In fact, Half a String go all out in every aspect, bringing their productions to multiple platforms, from creating the musical score to Spotify, while also producing high-quality trailers for each show.
“It’s really exciting to see the show being talked about and having award nominations,” says Peter. “People are enjoying what you do, talking about it and sharing it, and that’s what we love.”
This summer saw the release of Space Chickens, a production where the entire show is performed on the top of a van.
“The van came from Covid. I was sitting at home looking at it lying dormant for months,” remembers Peter. “So I got on the phone to my friend Nick and asked if he would do a show on top of my van, if I could make it work structurally. Plus, it is two metres in the air, so socially distanced immediately!”
While Covid is less of a problem these days, in Space Chickens a heroic hen is blasted into the atmosphere to solve some more of the world’s problems, backed by live banjo synth music. The puppetry van’s manoeuvrability means it is a great tool for getting live theatre into local schools and community centres. Similarly, with the Breathe tour, Half a String make sure they can take their production to all sorts of locations and venues.
“I think a big reason our shows are successful is that we can do our theatre show anywhere,” says Peter. “We’ll do studios, theatres, art centres all the way around the country, but we can also do a community hall or a school. We keep it super-flexible.
“We don’t shy away from anywhere. One of my favourite shows, the whole town has come to this little community centre with the wind battering it on the coast of Scotland, and it was such a lovely atmosphere, talking to the people afterwards. We’re quite comfortable in small-scale touring and we kind of dabble in mid-scale. I don’t think we’ll ever get to, like, West End, Mamma Mia-style touring, but I’m not sure we’d want to, either!”
This winter, Half a String, in conjunction with Hertford Theatre, will bring The Snowsmith to The Gulbenkian Arts Centre in Canterbury (7th-19th of December).
“It’s about an inventor called Eira who lives in the town of Thawmor, where everyone’s really grumpy,” says Peter. “And she is desperate to try to create snow so she can bring people together in a snow festival.
“This is part of our winter shows, very much leading to the Christmassy feelings of mince pies, warm fires, cold outside and snow and kind of very much uses the childish excitement of whether it’s going to snow. And the very first show we did, the press night, it did actually snow and everyone got snowed in - it was a bit of a nightmare!”
Of course, at Christmas, pantos provide super-important income for many venues.
“The UK theatre scene is divided into the subsidised stuff, which we’re part of, and then you’ve got the commercial stuff, and then you’ve got panto that helps a lot of the theatres. It’s great that people do that, but that’s not what we want to create. We want to create stuff that is original, and with original stories, that challenge people.”
INFO: halfastring.co.uk
Centre - Half A String’s Peter Morton
