Terrapin has embarked on a new course to create contemporary puppet theatre. This new direction is defined as digital puppetry.

Terrapin believes it is important for new work to reflect a contemporary voice and a contemporary aesthetic. Terrapin uses images and objects (be they puppets or objects that are animated) as central to its work. Therefore it is the obvious and natural progression for Terrapin to use the materials found in the contemporary world, virtual and real, to create new works.

Distilled down to its most fundamental core, digital puppetry is the animation of characters and the theatrical space using digital technologies. It is not a specific reference to any one type of technology, or aesthetic, but rather a broader catch phrase alluding to the materials that will be at the core of Terrapin’s future shows.

Digital puppetry is only distinct in that digital technologies are used to create characters in the same way wood or foam is sculpted to carve puppets or fabrics are used to make costumes.

Digital puppetry is not about using animation or projection to decorate the set of a show. It is not a form of animation or multi media cartoon but rather an exploration of new ways to be theatrical in puppet based visual theatre. It is principally concerned with using inanimate objects that in this instance are digital in some aspect of their functionality, and finding ways of applying these in the already animated world of puppetry.

In Terrapin’s show Helena and the Journey of the Hello (2008) the digital technology that was used to create characters and animate the space was mobile phones.

The first creative development to create this work used mobiles as a point of investigation, searching for the theatrical potential in what was possible with these lighting and sound devices. What emerged was the beginnings of a story about a young girl who finds her self abandoned, strung together through anagrams, black light theatre and a trio of story telling animals. Mobiles are an integral component to all of these aspects of the show. However it is not a show about mobiles, but a show that has come out of using mobiles a starting point for a theatrical exploration.

In Explosion Therapy, Terrapin’s first show exploring digital puppetry (2008), the film screen that was at the centre of the action was turned into a sort of puppet. It was the inanimate object that was made animate by the director, the performers and the video animator. The screen became the central dramatic device around which the entire play was based. It took control of the characters’ lives, slowly revealing itself to be cognisant and capable of affecting the journeys of the characters. It played the traditional role of an antagonist.

Digital puppetry is at its core nothing radically different from traditional puppetry and object theatre. It simply uses digital objects as the central device around which to animate characters, a story, theme or environment.