Toy Shop Tales

Toy Shop Tales is a puppet show set in a cosy magical toy shop where childhood dreams come true and toys come to life. The performance was devised by the MA Collaborative Performance Making 2025/26 cohort in collaboration with Little Angel Theatre. It takes young audiences on a captivating adventure with Willow, an old rag doll, and Robort, a highly technological hero. Along the way, the story explores acceptance, prejudice, loneliness, and responsibility through a cast of diverse and charismatic characters. The production toured ten schools and community centres, using a transformative suitcase set.

I led the puppet-making process, designing and building Bingo, the domino dog, while also contributing to the creation of Robort. The design process included research into toys, their histories and cultural variations, a trip to the Young V&A, and down memory lane for inspiration. Sustainability was central to the production, with the team aiming to reuse as many materials as possible. Bingo’s total production cost was only £10, with materials carefully sourced from scrap bins and leftover resources.

I was also a co-writer for the story. The idea of two characters following separate paths while influencing each other’s worlds, only meeting at the very end when the anticipation reaches its peak, had stayed with me for some time and was enthusiastically embraced by the cohort. I developed the script alongside the other writers, including several rhyming passages that added to the show’s whimsical atmosphere.