She has used puppets for therapeutic and educational projects in community arts over many years, and she has also made many types of puppets for theatre.

Some of her favourite work has been making puppets for the outdoor Dukes promenade productions. What Georgina loves most about puppet making is everything from early input in designing the puppets, through the various stages of building them, to eventually bringing them to life!

Some of the puppets in the images below have not been designed by Georgina, but she has made all of them.

Georgina’s love of puppets came from her childhood experiences. Her father used to take her to see traditional Greek shadow plays (called ‘Karagiozi’). These plays are performed outdoors in the summer evenings using candle or lamplight behind a white screen. They are similar to Punch and Judy, comic, violent and often grotesque. In her teens, Georgina’s interest in puppets grew. With friends, she started up the ‘Anglo-Hellenic Puppet Company’, a street theatre group, which involved busking around the Greek Islands. They performed aversion of Little Red Riding Hood in three languages (English, Greek and French). While touring, their puppets were spotted by the world’s youngest Punch and Judy showman (Patrick Newman), who actually commissioned Georgina to make a set of puppets for him.

In the future, Georgina is planning a new puppet show influenced by the Greek shadow plays she saw as a child. Currently in development, she describes it as “a visual, comic work of farcical, slapstick, knockabout puppetry!”

[Show as slideshow]

She has also been commissioned to make a flock of 24 life sized polystyrene sheep and also 20 giant polystyrene sparrows as part of Rochdale City Council’s Sheep and Bird Parade Youth Projects

[Show as slideshow]

To recreate a designer’s vision on such a large scale requires good perspective vision, accuracy and an understanding of interpretation. The sheer enormity of some sets can be daunting, sometimes 14 metres long by 6 metres high. As well as attention to detail (especially for intimate studio spaces)  the set has to work for an audience from all angles and most importantly, from a distance..

Over the years, Georgina has worked on many weird and wonderful productions. One of the strangest was at the Green Room (Manchester), working with a performance artist called Michael Mayhew. This involved creating lambs’ hearts frozen in solid blocks of ice, slugs climbing a glass wall and plaster casts of various human body parts. Also during this project she had to make a human body using food, which was eventually devoured by the audience.

[Show as slideshow]

Every year she passes on her expertise in the art of lantern making, as workshop leader and lantern maker for the spectacular Ulverston Lantern community festival, which culminates in a huge procession with hundreds of lanterns paraded through the streets.

Georgina offers workshops in puppet and mask making, including rod, glove and shadow puppets, as well as traditional Greek Shadow puppets ( Karaghiozi), carnival costume and giant puppets for celebratory events, and withie lantern-making. She has a teaching qualification and  is CRB checked.

[Show as slideshow]

She has also just designed the 2011 sculptural bonfire event for Goole City Council, a huge, community, pyrotechnics performance to take place on 5th November, attended by up to 10,000 people and is currently working with Shooting Fish Theatre Company on this project.

Georgina has worked for some varied and interesting companies including Yorkshire Television, the Mayakovsky Theatre (Moscow), Lantern House International( Cumbria), Dynamic New Animation, Horse and Bamboo, UNIMA Crete, IOU Theatre, the People’s History Museum, the Green Room(Manchester), The Dukes Theatre (Lancaster) and Oldham Coliseum.

[Show as slideshow]

Georgina Solo is a designer, maker, writer, scenic artist and puppeteer based in Lancashire. Her
career has spanned Community Arts, Carnival and Celebratory Arts, Theatre and Television.
Georgina has worked as a Community Arts worker at Bloomin’ Arts ( renamed Fusion- Oxford’s
Community Arts Agency ), where she worked on numerous projects including Fun in the Parks,
Summer Playschemes, the Mother and Toddler photography project and she set up the Young
People’s Puppet Group, and Cutteslowe Drama group.
She attended the London School of Puppetry, and The Puppet Centre, later working with Horse and
Bamboo Theatre on Guided Imagery and the Preston Guild celebrations. She designed and made
puppets and wrote scripts for Yorkshire Television and Ostankina T.V. and was based at the
Mayakovsky Theatre in Moscow.
She has also appeared on Blue Peter BBC T.V while performing at Bradford Festival.
She worked as a puppet maker with Julian Crouch and Phelim McDermott ( Improbable Theatre) on
the multi-award winning Shockheaded Peter, and has designed and made puppets for UNIMA
Crete, The Pumphouse People’s History Museum in Manchester, IOU Theatre, and Dynamic New
Animation.
She has worked with Welfare State, Harrogate Festival, Black Powder Monkeys and is a workshop
leader at Lanternhouse for the Ulverston Lantern festival.
Georgina is the Scenic artist and maker at the Dukes Theatre Lancaster, where she has worked on
many outdoor, site specific promenade productions such as Merlin and the Legend of King Arthur,
Peter Pan, Jason and the Argonauts, Beauty and the Beast, Arabian Nights, Pinocchio, The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer and many in-house productions such as the Snow Queen, The Twits,
Sleeping Beauty and Charlotte’s Web amongst others. She also regularly paints sets for Oldham
Coliseum.

Powered by Fast Secure Contact Form

Dynamic New Animation

Horse and Bamboo Theatre

Lanternhouse

The Dukes Playhouse

London School of Puppetry

Puppet Centre at Battersea Arts Centre