Animated response

Alan Ayckbourn had these words of advice for puppeteers Lee Threadgold and Dawn Dyson-Threadgold when they ran the idea for their latest project past the playwright: “You can’t do this alone, on a bike. You need a good team around you.”

They’ve taken the words of their old friend and mentor to heart – the couple are currently putting together a team to help them run a spectacular large-scale drama featuring both puppets and live actors which will unfold along Scarborough seafront.

Orpheus the Mariner will take place over two nights next February. Each evening 300-plus actors, more than 200 musicians, nearly 150 singers, and at least 150 marshalls, or “luminaries”, to guide spectators, will take part.

The highlight of the event will be the unveiling of what will be the world’s tallest-ever puppet. The creation, portraying Hades, god of the underworld, will be some 26 metres high – that’s nearly three times the size of the marionette of a little girl that roamed the streets of Liverpool when the French show Sea Odyssey visited last year.

Lee and Dawn – together, they are Scarborough-based Animated Objects Theatre Company, specialising in puppetry and large-scale festival and carnival events – are currently assembling the huge team they need to pull the whole thing off.

They’ve put together a tiny core of volunteer professionals from old friends at the town’s Stephen Joseph Theatre, where they met – but the vast majority of the work on their creation, both in advance and on the night, is going to be done by volunteers from the community.

“We held a public meeting recently, and more than 100 people turned up and signed up, both as individuals, and representing organisations,” says Lee. “People are signing up via our website, too. We ask them to state their skills and interests, then we’re going to use that information to match them up with a job.”

Organisations already on board range from Create, the arts development group which runs Coastival, the enormously popular annual arts festival in Scarborough alongside which Orpheus will run next year, to the local Guide Association and the University of Hull Scarborough Campus.

Animated Objects has also had tons of hands-on support from Scarborough Borough Council, which is on the practical case – road closures, traffic management and the like – already.

The huge figure of Hades will be built in sections using timber, bamboo and willow all connected by vertical cables, and covered in squares of sailcloth, ranging from half-a-metre to four metres square. Lee and Dawn are looking for local groups to “sponsor” the squares by becoming involved in the construction process.

Hades’ supporting cast will include a group of puppets around four metres tall, each requiring up to 15 “outrigger” puppeteers to manipulate them, and portraying heroes, Hades’s three-headed sidekick, and a sea serpent or monster.

There will also be masked actors – again, all volunteers from the community – as various characters, including seven versions of Orpheus himself in different emotional states. The performance will start outside the Spa and work its way along the seafront to the Harbour.

“We wanted to include lots of iconic local locations,” says Lee. “It’s one of the reasons we chose the myth of Orpheus as our story. The emotional journey that the characters go on and the dramatic elements of the story work well with the geography of the town.”

“It will need very little dressing – the area outside the Spa is almost a theatre in its own right, but to the best of our knowledge has never been used as one.”

The town’s twin Spa and Valley Bridges have also proved inspirational in the look of the event, which Dawn describes as “Victoriana/steam punk” – they’re even working in the town’s celebrated “flither girls”, the fishermens’ wives who gathered bait.

Part of the inspiration for Orpheus came from Animated Objects’ involvement in the York 800 celebrations, for which they produced giant puppets, and from Lee’s artistic directorship of the London 2012 Inspire Mark “Sporting Giants” project, which brought 23 York primary schools together to celebrate the visit of the Olympic Torch. The schools built their own giant puppets, which then went into combat at York Racecourse.

Scunthorpe-born Lee first lived in Scarborough as a teenager when he was a redcoat at the then Butlins-owned Grand Hotel. He then trained as a dancer, and performed worldwide until injury forced a re-think. Dawn also had early experience of Scarborough. She hails from Brighton, but used to visit the area regularly as a child. As an adult, she went into stage management and a colleague suggested that she’d be a good fit for the Stephen Joseph Theatre. She dropped into the theatre, and found herself with a job. She joined the venue in the mid-90s and left over 10 years later having worked her way up to company manager, along the way gaining legendary status for her resourcefulness – hence former boss Alan Ayckbourn’s comment about not going it alone, on a bike. The couple met when Lee did a work placement at the theatre as part of his degree. Lee’s marriage proposal happened in Bali, where they had gone to see for themselves the work of the Indonesian shadow puppeteers.

Hundreds of people have already signed up to be part of Orpheus the Mariner, but still more are needed. No previous theatrical experience is necessary, just commitment and enthusiasm. Visit the Animated Objects website at www.animatedobjects.co.uk.