Black Dog Theatre Company is an exceptional theatre company that was ‘set up to experiment using theatre techniques to support local people who suffered from poor confidence, low self-esteem and/or mental health issues.’ Alfie James founded the theatre company as a research project but it has become a great success and continues to be a highly popular community project that Alfie James Productions still champions.

 

PuppetSoup have been lucky enough to work with Alfie and Black Dog Theatre Creation through providing workshops in puppet manipulation for their productions. Participants benefited from training with PuppetSoup, not only through acquiring additional performance techniques but also through gaining confidence in their performances and seeing that puppetry can be a useful tool to express internal thoughts and emotions with. Puppets are of course also an alternative to a performer having to be directly in the ‘spotlight’ on stage and this was beneficial for participants to work with.