Alison Duddle
Alison Duddle is a freelance visual artist, puppet and mask designer, maker and director based in West Yorkshire, UK
As a designer and director of puppet and mask performance, Alison has worked for over 25 years creating for theatre, film and events. Her work aims for beauty and simplicity to create moments of wonder and joy. Her involvement with puppetry and mask theatre began with In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater in Minneapolis, and continued for many years with Horse and Bamboo (UK), latterly as joint artistic director, creating nonverbal puppet and mask performance for adults and families.
Alison works wherever possible with sustainable, natural materials, avoiding environmentally harmful processes and materials. Her artworks range from tiny hand carved theatre puppets to 3 metre giants made from paper mache, coconut matting and rattan.
Much of Alisons work is made for outdoor and community performance, and she has recently created large scale puppets and willow sculpture for At the Forests Edge for the RSC, Stratford, a Community Climate resilience pageant for Manchester University, and co-created puppets for Salzkammergut ECOC 2024
International projects include Mosul Tells in Iraq, where she taught puppet making and performance skills, and created a touring puppet and mask performance with participants from Mosul. She ran a 5 week puppetry residency with design students in China for Beijing Puppet Festival, and she has co-created work with people in Sweden, Austria, France, Madeira and the Czech Republic.
Alison is the director of 2 outdoor companies – A Bird in the Hand Theatre and Quiddlesticks, creating imaginative outdoor work for family audiences with a passion for the natural world at its heart. A Bird in the Hand tours to festivals and events with outdoor family-focussed puppetry, including The Bewonderment Machine, a hand-carved, cycle- powered carousel for young children, while Quiddlesticks, a collaboration with artist Jonny Quick, focusses on the creation of large-scale lantern puppets for winter events and celebrations.