Little Angel Theatre marks 65 years with a free marionette exhibition
by Best of Theatre Staff on Monday 3 August 2026, 2:34 pm in Theatre News
Little Angel Theatre will open its historic marionette collection to the public for the first time in a generation with Marionettes: An Exhibition Celebrating String Puppets, a free exhibition running from 22 August to 6 September at the Little Angel Workshop in Islington.
Little Angel Theatre has announced a new free exhibition, Marionettes: An Exhibition Celebrating String Puppets, running from 22 August to 6 September at the new Little Angel Workshop as part of the theatre's 65th anniversary celebrations. Supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, it opens the theatre's historic marionette collection to the public for the first time in a generation.
The exhibition showcases marionettes made across six decades, including work by Little Angel Theatre founders John Wright and Lyndie Wright, celebrated puppeteer Stephen Mottram, and a new wave of makers trained through the theatre's own carving courses. It takes place at the Little Angel Workshop on Cross Street, where a new generation of makers are learning the endangered craft of marionette making. Tickets are free but should be booked in advance.
Marionettes forms part of 600 Years on Strings, Little Angel's anniversary programme celebrating and safeguarding the craft of marionette-making. Previously announced highlights include the restoration of the theatre's historic marionette bridge, built in 1961 and one of only a handful in the world still capable of authentic long-string performance, plus training for a new generation of makers and puppeteers in a craft with almost no formal training route anywhere in the UK.
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. It premieres at Little Angel's Puppet Festival from 22 to 30 August 2026 for ages 6 and up. Inspired by Goethe's classic poem, this charming tale about imagination, responsibility and handling even a little magic with care will make full use of the historic marionette bridge.
Little Angel will also publish a new book this summer, Marionette: A DIY Guide to Make Your Own 9-String Puppet, an entry point for beginners that walks readers through the basics of making their first marionette and features essays and short biographies of influential marionette makers working in the UK today.
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 and, 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. Oliver Hymans has spent the past five years working to change that: training under some of the UK's last remaining masters, helping lead the campaign for the craft's Red List listing, and teaching more than twenty new makers through Little Angel's courses since 2024.
Oliver Hymans said: "Endangered crafts survive because people choose to practise them, teach them and pass them on. If this exhibition helps even a handful of people discover the same fascination I felt standing backstage at the Little Angel Theatre all those years ago, looking up at those silent figures hanging patiently above me, then perhaps we have helped ensure that marionettes will continue to dance for generations yet to come."