600 Years on Strings, Marionette Festival
Little Angel Theatre 2026
600 Years on Strings marks Little Angel Theatre’s 65th birthday. Highlights of the celebrations include the restoration of Little Angel’s historic marionette bridge, built in 1961 and one of only a handful in the world still capable of authentic long-string performance, and training for a new generation of makers and puppeteers in a craft with almost no formal training route anywhere in the UK.
Exhibition
Marionettes: An Exhibition Celebrating String Puppets running from 22 August – 6 September 2026 at Little Angel Workshop, Cross Street London.
A free exhibition bringing together historic and newly made marionettes, opening the Little Angel workshop and collection to the public for the first time in a generation. On show: work by leading British makers across six decades, from founders John and Lyndie Wright to a new generation of artists. 22 August – 6 September 2026, Little Angel Workshop.
Publication
Marionette: A DIY Guide to Make Your Own 9-String Puppet, published by Social Art Publications for the festival.
Marionettes may be carved wood, string and cloth, yet they convince us they can think, breathe and feel. This book is three things at once: a step-by-step guide to building your own marionette with nothing but basic hand tools; a catalogue of the makers, from Little Angel Theatre founders John and Lyndie Wright to the newest apprentices whose puppets featured in the theatre’s 65th anniversary exhibition; and a record of the production that brought their work back to the stage. Part instruction manual, part history, part invitation.
Training
ALAS is coordinating a maker-training strand: new maker trainees and performers working alongside experienced marionette makers and trainers to learn carving, stringing and manipulation.
Performance
New marionette production — The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
The anniversary celebrations culminate in the world premiere of a new marionette production The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, written, directed, and designed by Little Angel Associate Director Oliver Hymans, premiering at Little Angel’s Puppet Festival from 22 – 30 August 2026 (ages 6+). This charming tale about imagination, responsibility and handling even a little magic with care, inspired by Goethe’s classic poem, will make full use of the historic marionette bridge.
Panel Discussion
All Strings Attached: Marionettes and the Work of Keeping a Craft Alive
A panel discussion and screening bringing together members of the puppetry community to discuss why marionette making has become an endangered craft, what makes it distinct, and Little Angel and ALAS’s plans to secure its
future — including a live demonstration and a screening of Frances Barry’s documentary Untangling. 23 August 2026 5pm, Little Angel Theatre.
A 600-year tradition
In 1662, Samuel Pepys watched a marionette Punch and Judy show in Covent Garden and wrote about it in his diary, one of the earliest records of a British tradition that runs, unbroken, through fairground booths and Victorian theatres to Muffin the Mule and Gerry Anderson’s Supermarionation, all the way to a converted temperance hall in Islington, where John Wright founded Little Angel Theatre in 1961 and gave marionette puppetry a permanent home in the UK for the first time.
Today, that thread is close to breaking. Marionette-making is listed on the Heritage Crafts Red List of Endangered Crafts. Unlike most puppetry disciplines, it has no college course, no apprenticeship scheme and no formal route into the craft – only the slow, hands-on transmission of knowledge from one maker to the next.
About Little Angel Theatre
Fuelling the imagination through the magic and wonder of puppetry, we produce ground-breaking, innovative shows for children and their families at our venues and on tour. They also welcome puppetry companies from around the UK and overseas to our annual Children’s Puppetry Festival. Their intimate spaces offer the ideal first experience of live performance for the very young and a home for bold, thought-provoking work for older children, helping to nurture a lifelong love of theatre.
Alongside their productions, we deliver imaginative education and participatory activities in our venues, schools and community settings, as well as a programme of online shows and digital content available for those who can’t travel to our venues. They have used puppetry to create and share inspiring stories since opening our doors in 1961; igniting the imaginations of the youngest minds, and supporting puppetry artists at all stages of their careers. The theatre’s success has been built upon a spirit of artistic innovation and high quality production values. We are committed to pushing the boundaries of what puppetry can be, whilst preserving its heritage.
