Four generations and 100 years of puppet making

Puppet shows staged by a charity which has evolved over four generations of the same family continue to capture the imaginations of children.

The Young People's Puppet Theatre (YPPT), based in St Albans, was inspired by one created 100 years ago by the great-grandparents of Caitlin Duschenes in Germany.

Franz and Grete Duschenes began running an amateur puppet theatre in their living room in Hamburg in the 1920s.

YPPT was founded in 2015 by Caitlin, 34, and her father Jeremy, 72. It works with schools and helps children make their own puppets, design sets and stage full-scale productions.

Caitlin said puppetry was wonderful but it was "more about what it does for the children and the doors it unlocks for them".

She added it made them "realise they can do more than they thought".

In 1938, just before World War Two, the Duschenes family fled Nazi persecution and Grete took her youngest son, Mario (Caitlin's grandfather), to finish high school in Switzerland.

In 1947, while at music college there, Mario performed a marionette show of The Soldier's Tale, a theatrical work with music by Igor Stravinsky.

Around 20 years later, while teaching music at a secondary school in Montreal, Canada, Mario put on another production of The Soldier's Tale.

Among the students was his son, Jeremy, who went on to set up various marionette companies in Canada and in the UK while studying at Cambridge University.

Having settled in the UK, he worked with a primary school in St Albans in the early 2000s putting on several puppet shows - and introducing his daughter Caitlin to the art form.

He said: "My favourite part is making teachers tear up with pride."

YPPT works mostly with pupils aged nine to 11.

Shows range from Shakespeare to Greek mythology - or whatever the school chooses.

Caitlin said every child made their puppet after being given the wooden bodies to get them started.

She enjoyed the moment backstage when you had "the parents looking on" and the children had "a buzz".

She said: "I worked with a child who was managing his anger and he fluffed his lines and his knuckles went white.

"He took a deep breath and delivered his line perfectly."

She added: "It [puppetry] is giving them that boost they need to take on secondary school."

YPPT does projects with schools across London and the East of England and has worked with about 5,000 children in its first decade, staging over 150 productions.

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