00:00Leeds Children's Theatre has been running for over 90 years so 1935 it was
00:05established so just celebrated our 90th anniversary. I've been involved for 12
00:10years-ish and have been chair for the last three and we currently do two
00:14productions a year as well as some workshops. Yeah and I've been involved
00:19since I was 12 so they haven't managed to get rid of me yet. I've gone through
00:23the whole process of being a child of the Leeds Children's Theatre to then
00:29taking on my responsibility. I now lead workshops which we have on a Saturday
00:33morning at the Carriageworks and I am one of our resident directors. I was really
00:38lucky to direct Skellig, one of David Armand's other books in 2022 on the
00:44main stage here and got a call the week before saying that David would be in the
00:50audience on one of the nights because Freya, his daughter, was graduating from
00:54Leeds Uni so just happened to be in the town and that was probably the most
00:57nerve-wracking phone call I've ever received but it was great and he loved it
01:03he came to see it loved what Children's Theatre do and that started a wonderful
01:08relationship with him and Freya. Yeah they came backstage and they met the cast and the
01:12kids were absolutely over the moon to meet the writer of Skellig and then of
01:17course he wrote Puppet and that came out in 2024 so it's a fairly new story really. When he
01:25was writing it he could see the characters coming alive and he wanted it to be a 3D
01:30version of the story so him and his daughter Freya and they decided to do it
01:36as a collaboration and adapt it together. Rehearsals are going really well we've
01:40got quite a big cast and we've got lots of children and young people from in and
01:44around Leeds and we've got a couple of adults as well and it's really fun the
01:48rehearsal process is always fun and chaotic and exciting and nerve-wracking but
01:53everybody's doing a great job the acting is really beautiful and I think it's
01:56really exciting to be able to see some of the tender moments that me and my dad
02:02wrote and seeing it come to life is really exciting. Puppet is about an old
02:08puppeteer Sylvester he is near in retirement he's given all his puppets up
02:13to the local museum because he's been a really successful puppeteer in his
02:17lifetime but he decides to make one last puppet and Puppet comes alive which has
02:25never happened before so he decides to take Puppet out into the world. With every
02:31Leeds children's theatre production we want children and young people to come
02:34away feeling inspired and also able to create something like this and it's
02:39obviously we're really privileged that we get to perform on a proper stage the
02:44fact that it's been going for so long is really testimony to the amount of time
02:47and effort and dedication that goes into it and because we're all volunteers
02:51it's completely volunteer run. Leeds children's theatre are at the
02:54Carriageworks theatre with their next production of Puppet from Thursday the
02:575th to Sunday the 8th of November
