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Artist Profile - Departure Times, Spring 2005 Name? Joe Gladwin Artform? Puppet Theatre How did you get started? During my childhood I was taken to a lot of pantomimes, musicals, and the touring Gilbert & Sulliavan productions. I 'reproduced' these at home with shop bought Pelham Puppets; many years later and after a stint at The Central School of Speech and Drama I trained with a famous puppeteer called Barry Smith, one of the great masters of 20th century British puppetry. What's your favourite part of working with schools and young people? coming in with an idea and seeing how it transforms and grows as everybody contributes, particularly when the idea is unexpected. What's the most embarrassing thing that's happened to you during a project? Many years ago, I was touring South East Asia with an Australian puppet theatre. After one performance, I think it was in Manila, the management announced to a huge auditorium packed with schoolteachers that we puppeteers would talk for 45 minutes about puppetry and it's uses in education. For years I looked upon this moment in my career as a major disaster as we were all far too young, and wholly unprepared to even begin such a task. The audience was very polite! How do you begin to come up with new ideas for projects? Music plays a big part, images in magazines, paintings in a gallery and of course talking through an idea with a colleague whose opion one trusts. What do you do in your spare time to relax and have fun? What spare time! All my work revolves around school/childcare issues and juggling family life, however we enjoy all the local countryside walks, going to movies with our son and 'special treats'! I'd love to say I do gym workouts and marathons at weekends, but I don't; lugging puppet staging about is my exercise. What advice would you give to new artists wanting to start out? Learn all you can about your subject, in my case, puppetry. This is an ongoing and never-ending process. Persevere; you can only get more skill. Practice, practice, practice. Welcome failure when it comes as an opportunity for progression. What was the most successful project you have been involved with? This is really hard question to answer because every project has some interesting spin-offs and I count a successful project as one which has produced further results than the initial expectation required. So...I choose a production of The Little Prince at The Octagon Theatre in Bolton in 1990. Why? Because on the first day of rehearsals I met the composer Helen Porter. We have subsequently collaborated on many exciting educational and theatrical projects, including The Highwayman, which we shall premiere in November this year, and more importantly I met my wife Sarah who knew Helen. Any tips for other artists about working with schools? Stand your ground! Don't get bamboozled into condensing your project into too small a time frame. Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 Next >> |