The Sex Lives of Puppets
About the Artists
Mark Down
Ben Keaton
Dale Wylde (Puppeteer)
Elliot Liburd (Puppeteer)
Isobel Griffiths (Puppeteer)
James Mackenzie
Russell Dean
Charlina Lucas
Fergus Carver
Mark Down is Artistic Director of Blind Summit Theatre which he co-founded with Nick Barnes in 1997. Before forming Blind Summit he worked as a performer with companies such as London Bubble, Cardboard Citizens, Stanley Hall Opera, Treadwell Gallery, Wireframe, Dynamic New Animation, Theatre Rites, Globe Players, Midsummer Actors, Economical Truth, Turning Point TC and had various roles on TV and commercials including Eastenders and Granada Breeze. He also did occasional stand up comedy.
For Blind Summit Mark writes, directs, designs and performs. His work in theatre includes Peter and the Wolf with the LA Phil at the Hollywood Bowl, 1984 (Battersea Arts Centre), Angus, Thongs and Even More Snogging (West Yorkshire Playhouse), His Dark Materials (Birmingham Rep and West Yorkshire Playhouse), Shun-kin (Complicite, Setagaya Theatre Tokyo, Barbican)and Greenland (National Theatre). In opera he has directed Le Rossignol at the Bregenz Festival, and was puppetry designer and director for The Magic Flute (Bregenz Festival), El Gato Con Botas (Broadway: Gotham Chamber Opera, Tectonic Theatre Project) and Kommilitonen! (Royal Academy of Music and Julliard, New York). He has collaborated with choreographers such as Will Tuckett in Faeries (ROH2) and Akram Khan in The Vertical Road. He has also directed and performed puppetry for TV including Holy Flying Circus and Professor Branestawm both for the BBC. He has written, directed and performed in over 45 productions.
Mark teaches puppetry technique at all the major London drama schools. In 2022 he published A Practical Guide to Puppetry which sets out how to learn Blind Summit’s unique “extreme puppetry style”. It is on sale worldwide.
His most recent shows The Sex Lives of Puppets, What to Do in a Puppet Emergency and The Law Of Gravity (with The Scottish Ensemble) are currently touring.
Irishman Ben Keaton is a writer, director and teacher. In the past, he has been a multi-award-winning actor with an Olivier Nomination and a Perrier Award and three Manchester Evening News awards under his belt. He has acted in TV—Father Ted, Casualty (regular cast) the film East is East and played the lead in countless theatre productions including Cyrano De Bergerac, Animal Crackers, Harvey, The Odd Couple and American Buffalo in the regions and the West End. He has written six series for the BBC and Channel 4. He has directed corporate videos, short films, and documentaries. He has collaborated with circus performers, comedians, dancers, and puppet companies, most recently as co director and writer of The Sex Lives of Puppets for Mark Down and Blind Summit Theatre. He is the founder of the charity The Creativity Academy, which is dedicated to bringing the creative process to young children in the deprived area of East Lindsey, Lincolnshire. At the age of six, he won the book Mr. Man and His New Red Van at a school prize-giving. He has been a writer ever since. His work is rhythmical, comic, and fearless—a distinctive voice in constant search of adventure.
Dale Wylde is a teacher, director and performer. He trained at East 15 (BA Hons Physical Theatre) and has since worked with many diverse pedagogs, directors and artists. These include David Glass ( The David Glass Ensemble) Briony O’Callaghan (Created a Monster) Matej Matejka (Grotowski institute, Studio Matejka, Poland) Marie-Gabrielle Rotie; Mark Down (Blind Summit Theatre) Saga Kobayashi, Minoru Hidoshi and Matsuko Tanaka, (Hijikata Memorial Museum, Otsuki, Japan)
Dale Wylde is an associate artist with Flabbergast theatre, Created a Monster and The David Glass Ensemble. He was an associate director for Flabbergast theatres Macbeth which was nominated for two offie awards, one of which was for his performance, and was recently the puppetry director for David Glass's original show Galapagos.
As a teacher Dale Wylde has facilitated workshops, for both children and adults, for some of the most accredited institutes in the country including most recently for EDUQAS, where he facilitated workshops for secondary school teachers all around the UK. Dale Wylde's work brings together a broad range of influences from mask, mime and puppetry to his work in poor theatre, butoh and commedia del arte.
Elliot Liburd graduated from Kent University and then trained at The Fourth Monkey.
Recent theatre includes: Alice in Wonderland at the Marylebone Theatre (2025). Punch Drunk’s The Lost Lending Library (2025) . He played John Grenville in Exeter Northcott Theatre’s The Commotion Time (2024). The Instrumentalists at The Southbank Centre (2024). He played Jay Gatsby in The Immersive Great Gatsby in London’s West End (2023).
Other credits include: Les Enfants Terribles’ Sherlock Holmes: An Online Adventure (2021).
Television includes: The Third Day: Autumn for Punch Drunk and Sky TV (2020).
Isobel Griffiths is an actor, puppeteer and theatre-maker from Bristol. She trained at Rose Bruford College and graduated in 2021. Isobel has been working and devising with Blind Summit since 2023.
Theatre credits include: The Sex Lives Of Puppets (Southwark Playhouse, Edinburgh Fringe) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Antic Disposition).
In training: Boudica (The Unicorn Theatre); [BLANK] (Rose Bruford College).
Film/TV credits include: The Fence (Red Anchor Films); and Dust (UWE Film).
James Mackenzie is a freelance lighting designer working across all art forms and genres with a particular love of dance, opera and highly visual theatre.His designs have been seen across the UK and Internationally and he enjoys collaborating and creating on the smallest to largest of productions.
He believes strongly in working collaboratively with the whole creative team from early on in the process to create a cohesive and meaningful design.
Alongside his lighting work James McKenzie is the Artistic Director of award winning Zoo Venues at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where he programmes a range of companies specialising in Dance and Physical Theatre.
Russell Dean is Artistic Director of Strangeface Theatre Company. His roles include planning and communicating the Artistic Vision of the company, designing and making the masks and puppets, running residencies and workshops
Russell studied at Aberystwyth University where he gained a first class degree in Drama. He worked as a freelance designer/maker and facilitator for Trestle Theatre Company, Welsh National Opera, Theatre Company Blah Blah Blah amongst many others.
Russell has been a writer, director, designer/maker, performer, project manager and facilitator on 9 productions and hundreds of workshops for Strangeface since 2001.
During this time he has also developed a reputation for being one of the country’s leading mask makers. He designs and makes commissions and box sets of masks for schools, groups and other artists such as Vamos, Bootworks and Mick Barnfather.
Charlina Lucas is a trained stage and costume designer (University Mozarteum Salzburg in Austria). She began working with Blind Summit in February 2017 as a puppet maker and has since contributed to numerous freelance projects with the company.
Since 2022, Charlina has been a regular member of the Blind Summit team, working as an administrator and taking on a range of roles such as designer, company manager, and show operator. She has been involved in the development of The Sex Lives of Puppets since the initial puppeteer auditions in May 2022.
Fergus Carver is a freelance musician, technician and sound designer living and working in London. He studied music at Durham University specialising in electronic music composition and has worked extensively in theatre ever since, across all departments, specialising in sound. He has worked in technical management since 2021 and most recently has held the position of deputy technical manager at Southwark Playhouse, where he has managed teams of freelancers, run get ins, get outs, seating turnarounds and oversaw many productions. He first worked with Blind Summit in January 2024, helping install the show at Southwark Playhouse. Similarly when the show returned to London in September 2024 he worked on the show again, managing the production period from the venue and helping with programming and rigging.
Fergus is a regular at the Edinburgh fringe, working with all major venues and as an operator, lighting designer, sound designer and performer. Upcoming projects include sound designing fishing 4 chip’s production of It’s Gonna Blow (Pleasance Edinburgh 2025), lighting programming and operating for Josie Long: Now is the time of Monsters (Pleasance Edinburgh 2025) and a production of The Trials at Southwark Playhouse at the end of August.
Credits
Idea: Mark Down
Written and Directed by Mark Down and Ben Keaton
Lighting: James Mckenzie
Design: Mark Down
Puppet Design: Mark Down and Russell Dean
Puppets made by Russell Dean, Helen Foan, Nick Barnes, Fiona Clift, Natasha Burns, Rachel Salenius, Charlina Lucas
Costume Design: Mark Down and Charlina Lucas
Touring Technical Manager: Fergus Carver
Puppeteers Mark Down, Isobel Griffiths, Dale Wylde, Elliot Liburd
About Blind Summit
Blind Summit’s aim is to "Make Puppetry History". Their mission is to expand the definition of a puppet.
For twenty years Blind Summit have consistently subverted people's expectations of puppetry: from giant storybook characters in the opening ceremony of London’s 2012 Olympic Games to The Table, a globally successful touring production that completely up-ended audiences’ understanding of how puppet and puppeteer communicate.
Mark Down’s work as Director and Master Puppeteer has drawn plaudits in a series of landmark opera and theatre productions all over the world, including commissions for the Spoleto and Bregenz Festivals and, in Anthony Minghella’s production of Madame Butterfly, for the English National Opera and, the Met Opera in New York.
Blind Summit’s cohort of exceptional makers and puppeteers has also contributed to the creation of some of the most extraordinary spectacles of recent years, including War Horse and Pinocchio at the Royal National Theatre and The Lorax at the Old Vic.
Mark Down is Artistic Director and co-founder of Blind Summit. He originally trained as a doctor before retraining at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama on the MA Advanced Theatre Practice course.
Over his 20 years of leading Blind Summit he has developed a method of working with puppets that integrates writing, designing, directing and performing into one process which he calls "Follow the Puppet". His original productions for Blind Summit include The Table, Low Life, 1984, Call of the Wild and most recently Citizen Puppet. He directed Le Rossignol in collaboration with Bregenz Festival, and co-directed the US Premiere of the Helmut Lachenmann's The Little Match Girl for Spoleto Festival.
As Puppet Director and designer Mark has worked with world class artists to put puppetry in new and unusual places: Sorrow in Anthony Minghella's Madame Butterfly at ENO and the Metropolitan Opera, the singing dog Sharik in Complicite’s A Dog’s Heart at ENO, DNO and La Scala, and the 18 feet tall Voldemort at Danny Boyle’s 2012 London Olympic Opening Ceremony. He directed the puppetry for Emma Rice’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Globe in 2016. He is a visiting lecturer at UAL Wimbledon and Royal School of Speech and Drama.
Ben Keaton is a multi-award-winning actor – (Olivier Nominee, three Manchester Evening News Best Actor Awards, Perrier Award). He started on the comedy circuit in the 1980s before taking leads in theatre. That led to national, and international touring and the West End. He has a wide range of TV credits from a regular cast member on Casualty to Father Ted. He’s written 6 TV series for the BBC and Channel 4 and he created Brainiac Live - an adaptation of the hit SKY science series designed for arenas nationwide and much, much more
About The Sex Lives of Puppets
Inspired by real-life conversations with real-life people; puppets talk dirty.
Blind Summit is a theatre company notorious for using puppets to address unlikely subjects – we encountered puppet alcoholism in their work Low Life, puppet existentialism in The Table, and puppet possession in Henry, A Ghost Story. Now, they invite audiences to dive under the covers to shed light on The Sex Lives of Puppets and try to answer some important questions including:
What do puppets look like naked?
What is no strings sex?
What are you doing with your hands?
The Sex Lives of Puppets is a multi-layered piece of theatre. On the surface, offering a fun and frank exploration of puppet desire at the hands of their Dionysian puppet-masters, and on a deeper level engaging skilled puppetry to express human moods, fears, worries, hang-ups and desires that will immediately resonate with its audience.
Working in collaboration with the London School of Hygiene specifically with the National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles - which is amongst the largest and most detailed scientific studies of sexual behaviour in the world - co- writers / directors Ben Keaton (Perrier Award Winner, Father Ted) and Mark Down (Artistic Director of Blind Summit Theatre), take inspiration from real-life responses, to lead an impish cast of improviser puppeteers, and a veritable smorgasbord of different puppets to explore sex and humanity, and – of course - to expose the underbelly of puppet eroticism.
In a series of two hander interview scenes in which a cast of puppet couples of all genders, races and ages, talk about their sex lives, the show uncovers puppet sex problems that are unquestioningly familiar. They consider subjects ranging from sexting, to dating apps, to online porn and sexual wellbeing, a tale of tangled sexual relationships unfolds to reveal a snapshot of sex (both human and puppet) in contemporary Britain.
Direct from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Scotland’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe takes place each August and draws daring, experimental, and genre-defying performances from around the world. A slice of that creative energy comes to Stanford Live this season, as Burnout Paradise and two other Fringe-acclaimed productions make their way to campus.
Spanning theater and performance art, these works address social issues and difficult topics—including burnout, female madness, and sexuality—with a healthy dose of artistic risk and bold humor.
