Peggy Hetherington once amusingly characterised her role in puppetry as “self-effacing back-up”, and while there is no denying the major part played by her brilliant husband in the TV series Mr Squiggle and Friends, as the script-writer she was invaluable. Peggy died peacefully in September, at the grand age of 99, having spent the last year in a retirement home, but until there she had managed to cope with the 39 steps that led up to the Hetherington family home in Mosman, not far from where her daughter Rebecca now lives. 

Margaret Purnell was born in Sydney in 1923, and as an art student in 1943 she accompanied a friend to drop off some paints at the New Theatre League during a rehearsal of Oriel Gray’s play Lawson, and ended up playing a part in the play.  She then became involved in other productions as stage-manager, costume-maker or actor.   [Someone she remembered from the New Theatre in her time there was a U.S. soldier then stationed in Sydney, Corporal Will Lee Lubovsky.  Some of us will remember him as the Will Lee who played the grocer, Mr Hooper, in Sesame Street from its beginning in 1969 until his death in 1982.]  One of Peggy’s surprising achievements was travelling from England to Sydney in 1952 on a small sailing ship as one of a crew of three!

In 1958 she married cartoonist/puppeteer Norman Hetherington and Norman’s puppet of Mr Squiggle, destined for fame, began appearing on ABC TV in 1959, with scripts written by Peggy.  Edith Murray, secretary of the Puppetry Guild, was delighted by the marriage because Peggy was a distant cousin!  And at one time Peggy herself was secretary of the Guild.

In 1974 she assisted Norman when he compiled Puppets in Australia, a booklet richly illustrated with photos, funded by the Australian Council for the Arts [now known as the Australia Council] and issued free, ahead of a puppet festival in Melbourne in January 1975.   She wrote Mr Squiggle and the Great Moon Robbery [1980], Mr Squiggle and the Preposterous Purple Crocodile [1992], both of which Norman illustrated, and Mr Squiggle to the Rescue [1998], an audiobook of three stories, narrated by Rebecca.  Of special interest to puppeteers is the delightful book Hand Shadows [ 1988] by Norman and Margaret Hetherington. [Until Norman had a nasty accident in the 1950s, with a chisel cutting into a tendon to a thumb, he used to do a charming shadow show using his hands and “add-ons”.]

I have many happy personal memories, but especially of 1968-9, my last years of teaching, when my grandmother was in a retirement home just around the corner from the Hetheringtons.  Several times I was able to combine a visit to Grandma in the afternoon with a meal in their home to follow…and lots of laughter.  Sadly I haven’t seen Peggy since Norman’s funeral in 2010, but Murray Raine made a point of visiting when up from Melbourne.

The attached photo was taken at the Hetherington home in Mosman one Sunday in early 1975, when the great German marionettist, Albrecht Roser, was in Sydney to perform.  (Roser had earlier seen a performance by Norman at the puppet festival in Melbourne that January.)  Left to right are Albrecht Roser (crouching!), me, Stephen (now Prof. Stephen Hetherington), Rebecca (peeking around), Norman and, in front, Peggy. The photo was taken by Albrecht’s assistant, Ingrid Höfer.

Richard Bradshaw

Footnote:  In November, Peggy’s grandson Tom Hetherington-Welch, Rebecca’s younger son, used puppets he made in a well-received show he co-wrote for the Sydney University Drama Society [SUDS].

The large extended family and community whose lives were touched by Elka Schumann mourn the end of her rich life on August 1^st.  I count myself among that group. I met Elka in the mid-1970s, when I was fresh out of college and trying to make sense of the world. She was the person who introduced me to singing, to puppetry, and to theater. She remained a dear friend and mentor.

Elka was the backbone of Bread and Puppet Theater. While raising five children, she was also able to be chief counsel and critic to her brilliant and prolific husband Peter. She managed the theater’s finances, founded and ran the Bread and Puppet Press – disseminating posters, calendars, books and recordings throughout the world. She was the primary caretaker and curator of the theater’s huge barn museum. And, when I first connected with her, she was designer, writer and director of Dancing Bear Children’s Theater, performing hand puppet shows in public schools throughout northern Vermont. She was an accomplished singer and flautist, and was responsible for introducing me, as well as Bread and Puppet, to the a cappella hymn tradition known as shape-note singing, which became a mainstay in the theater’s productions.

Elka was born Elka Leigh Scott in Magnitogorsk, Siberia. Her father, John Scott, was an American Communist, interested in the radical re-imagining of economic structures and the creation of a new social order in the Soviet Union. Her mother, Masha Dikareva, was Russian; she had one sister, Elena. When the Nazis invaded Russia, the family fled. Her father’s politics took a sharp turn toward conservatism, and they spent time in Germany, New York State, and New York City, finally settling in Ridgefield, CT.  She attended Bryn Mawr College, and met Peter Schumann during a junior year abroad in Munich, Germany, when she was enlisted to join his non-dancer dance company.

Elka’s grandfather was Scott Nearing, whose back-to-the-land democratic socialism had a powerful influence on her as well.

Through this heritage, and through her partnership with Peter, Elka developed an acute sense of justice, and a belief in the possibility of building new structures, and imagining new worlds. Bread and Puppet’s deep ethical foundations – anti-war, pro-democracy, frugality, living in harmony with the earth – were well-lived in Elka herself.  There was always room at the table for one more roaming puppeteer. There was always a song, a slice of bread, and an encouraging word.

I spent my first months as a Bread and Puppet company member after they had already escaped the streets of NYC for a more pastoral existence on Cate Farm in Plainfield, VT. The company was on tour in Europe and I was alone with Elka and her kids. I joined adventures of her design on picnics, hikes, and cultural trips. I loved those escapades, complemented by visits to many remote elementary schools to perform puppet shows. Later, I had opportunities to tour with Elka, often to distant lands, and I was struck by how open her eyes always were, how eager to see and learn new things, how willing to extend herself to new situations.

In Glover, the theater took up residence on a farm purchased by Elka’s parents. Elka was a consistent strong protector of the land – pine forest, apple orchard, hay fields, sugar bush, house, barn and outbuildings – especially as they were transformed into amphitheatre, workshop, puppet storage, museum and venue for tens of thousands of annual spectators. Creating a balance between private home and public space, between the needs of her family and the needs of the theater, and between the grandeur of Peter’s vision and the simplicity of the life-style they chose, was an ongoing struggle. But her expansive generosity was its own art form. She was the definition of hospitality for me and countless other puppeteers. Her guiding light continues to shine.

Trudi Cohen (August 16, 2021)

Rose Hill of Mildura, a devotee of puppetry and the mother of the brilliant puppeteer, Ross Hill, died in Melbourne aged 99.  As she says in this link to a short ACMI video from 2017, she became involved with puppetry as an aid to helping Ross overcome a speech defect resulting from a bout of encephalitis.  Those of us who knew Ross would never have suspected that he had ever had such a problem, but the puppetry not only helped him to overcome it, it launched what would become his career.

https://www.acmi.net.au/works/117301

or

Rose and her husband Arthur, had a poultry farm in Mildura.  They built the house themselves despite the constraints of wartime Australia, and there they raised a family of four boys, John, Keith, Ross and David.  John has a strong boyhood memory of the day that Ross was born, 7 November 1954. Rose had been bedridden with encephalitis for some time before being transferred to the hospital and late that afternoon a tornado had swept across the district doing extensive damage.  

With Rose’s help and encouragement Ross was presenting a regular marionette segment on local TV in Mildura when he was 14 and still at school. He had been particularly inspired by Peter Scriven’s Tintookies, and in Rose’s video you will see some of his marionettes from that time, many (such as the goat and the chook), clearly showing that influence.  Especially interesting were the figures he had made which did not have the basic humanoid construction, and in later life Ross had an amazing skill in turning a free-hand sketch into a working puppet.

Rose made contact with the puppetry community, and puppeteers passing through Mildura often paid a visit.  In 1973 Ross was invited by L. Peter Wilson to join the Tasmanian Puppet Theatre in Hobart and while there was responsible for a 13-part TV series. From 1977-1984 he was with Richard Bradshaw at the Marionette Theatre of Australia in Sydney where he was invaluable as a brilliant puppet-maker although he was also a gifted performer.  

Rose, Arthur and Ross attended the UNIMA Festival in Moscow in 1976 and Rose also went to the 1979 festival organised by PUK in Tokyo celebrating 50 years of UNIMA.  At that festival Ross worked as a puppeteer in the M.T.A.’s The Mysterious Potamus, for which he had made the puppets (to Norman Hetherington’s designs).  Ross’s manipulation of Paul the Peacock and Calvin the Crocodile was outstanding. His cruel death in1991 at the age of 36 was a tragic loss to Australian puppetry, and a devastating blow for Rose and the Hill family.

Two political figures Ross made to designs by cartoonist Patrick Cook were installed in the Museum of Democracy in Old Parliament House, Canberra, near puppets by Peter Nicholson for the ABC’s Rubbery Figures which Ross had originally had a hand in making while at the M.T.A.  After he left the M.T.A. Ross freelanced, and even worked for Jim Henson in London on the movie Labyrinth.

Rose Hill created the Mildura Puppetry Centre in a large room added on to the house.  There she displayed Ross’s early marionettes and many other figures she had gathered or made.  Some of Edith Murray’s figures from the Clovelly Puppet Theatre in Sydney were there.  The Centre was visited by schoolchildren and other local groups and puppeteers who visited when they were passing through Mildura were surprised by the extent of the collection.  The following link will give you some idea: 

https://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/country-living/93yearold-rose-hill-is-milduras-puppet-master/news-story/2081ba7e1da081788d15ffac6fb8a0c3

Rose Hill had been in hospital in Mildura where her mind was fading before being transferred to a hospital in Melbourne, to be close to her son, John and his wife, Kerry, and also to have the company of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  She died three days after catching COVID-19 in hospital.   A great character, with enormous energy, a good sense of humour and, to the very end, devoted to puppetry, especially as an educational tool.  

There remains the problem of the future of the Mildura Puppetry Centre with Rose’s large collection of puppets.  Rose would have liked to extend the facility to set up a museum as a tourist attraction but unfortunately it remained a dream.  Rose’s sons hope there might be an enterprising puppeteer willing to purchase the property and restore the facility to its former glory.  Perhaps they may even build that museum that Rose and Ross would have loved.

There are some excellent museums of puppetry in other countries and it would solve a growing problem if somehow, somewhere in Australia, a home for “retired puppets” could be established.  If it can’t be in Mildura then hopefully another solution can be found to keep the collection together.

John, Keith & David would welcome any enquiries: 0408 688 122

by Richard Bradshaw and John Hill

We present to you a special issue of the Oz Puppetry Email Newsletter (O.P.E.N.) dedicated to UNIMA Australia Life Member Axel Axelrad, who passed away on 13th November 2018 aged 99 years. 

O.P.E.N. was a free email puppetry newsletter edited by Julia Davis and Richard Hart (Dream Puppets), and ran from 2010-2015. Julia and Richard reopened the newsletter for this special edition, and we thank them for their considerable efforts in compiling this very important record of Australian Puppetry history.

Thank you to everyone who also shared their stories and memories about Axel. 

You can read this issue in two parts, by clicking on the links below.

Congratulations to Fiona Finley from the Drama Studio (Wollongong, NSW), who has been awarded the 2018 Lorrie Gardner UNIMA Austraila Biennial Scholarship. She will receive her requested amount of $550 to learn cardboard puppetry and mask construction and performance from specialist tutor Kay Yasugi (Pupperoos).

Applications for the next scholarship will open in 2020. To be eligible, an applicant must be a continuous financial member of UNIMA Australia for at least 2 years. To join, please go to our UNIMA Australia Member Planet site

Or Contact our Membership Secretary, Ruri Konishi, via our Contact form.