The House at Pooh Corner is the second and final A. A. Milne novel; featuring Winne and his friends’ adventures in a series of heartwarming stories. The ADC’s production of The House at Pooh Corner seeks to transport the audience into the storyworld with intricate and life-like puppets that strike a balance between Milne’s illustrations and Disney’s adaptation. Clotilde is the lead puppet designer on the show, supported by Ellie Russell, Maddy Allardyce, and Nina Winstone to help bring this vision to life.

While in conversation with Clotilde Dumont, she told me that the main inspiration for the production’s puppets are Milne’s original illustrations, having to “peel the layers” of Disney’s influence away from the characters in order to get closer to the novel. Clotilde’s aspiration to remain faithful to the original led her to create her own detailed sketches for each of the characters, recreating: “what I think the characters would look like if they were more inspired by the story.”

“Joe Hisashi and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of My Neighbor Totoro also inspired Clotilde”

Beyond the preliminary sketches, the creation of the puppets themselves is a complex process. It begins with creating a chicken wire frame structure, then involves sewing felt overtop of the protective wadding and partially stuffing areas according to the character’s physicality. Clotilde credits inspiration from Sophie Daily-Hunt’s creation of a cat from chickenwire in the ADC’s Week 2 Lent play Skellig, leading her to adopt the same material for her puppets. Beyond other student puppetry, Joe Hisashi and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of My Neighbor Totoro also inspired Clotilde with its extremely lifelike puppets – which made her question: “how are they doing it?” The baby totoros that were controlled by rods in the production particularly inspired Clotilde’s vision for Piglet and Roo, which will be more like typical rod puppets compared to the puppet-like costumes that will be worn by the actors for larger characters like Tigger, Pooh, and Kanga.

The idea whereby actors would wear the puppets of larger characters was particularly fascinating to me; Clotilde confessed that she felt like a “costume designer” as well as a puppet-maker. The puppets for the larger characters will be attached under the bust and “move with the actors” with sleeves for the actors to put their hands through. Moreover, there is the further dimension of interacting with props. While the puppet-costumes will be fairly intuitive, Clotilde was considering magnets in the limbs of rod puppets like Piglets to enable this interaction.

The intricacy of the smaller characters is not the only challenge for Clotilde and her team of puppet-makers to overcome. There is also the need for puppets to last, and the idiosyncratic nature of each puppet: “Each puppet is doing something different, which means that every puppet has a different problem to solve.” The time pressure as the show’s cast and crew prepare for the show simultaneously is an added constraint that Clotilde and her team must navigate alongside the prevailing exam season.

Furthermore, the art of puppet-making is not only a test of one’s artistic talent, but also the ability to solve problems creatively and resourcefully. Throughout the creative process, Clotilde has repeatedly returned to the question: “where does actor begin and puppet start?” The idea of the actor intimately interacting with the puppet is much like that of a child with a toy. So, even the actor’s manipulation of the puppets serves to further the childlike, nostalgic atmosphere of the play and its inspirations.

“The idea of the actor intimately interacting with the puppet is much like that of a child with a toy”

The ADC’s production of The House at Pooh Corner will undeniably be a great opportunity for people to engage with a more tactile and physical medium of theatre. Without a doubt, the play’s stroll down memory lane will serve as a testament to A. A. Milne’s original sketches and artistic vision. The work and deliberation over the most minute of details: from Tigger’s tail to navigating copyright issues with a red scarf instead of a red shirt for Winnie, will definitely show in the final product on stage.

This production is set to be a heartwarming return to the endearing world of Hundred Acre Wood; it’s the perfect nostalgic play to remind you, after a stressful exam term, that it’s the journey that matters most.

The House at Pooh Corner will play at the ADC from the 17th - 20th of June