The Love of A Good Woman
2012. A bedsit in East London. Outside the Olympic games are starting, inside Roy Cuff’s life is about to change forever.

A collaboration between writer Andrew Muir and puppeteer Maximum Humphries
Performed by Finn Caldwell, Caroline Partridge and Eliza Wills
Directed by Jennie Fellows
click on an artists name above for biography.

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The Process…

Although we came from very different theatre backgrounds, we both had the same obsession, telling a good story, so the idea of having a scene from a play ….was quickly discarded, instead we would put on a short play that tells a story from start to finish. Muir's synopsis had only one puppet, but he wasn't too precious about his work so I quickly added four more characters and between us we started to formulate a good yarn, him doing all the nice wordy bits and me thinking up ways for objects to transform into people in startling ways.
(Max Humphries, puppeteer)

From my playwrighting point of view, my initial fear, quickly turned to joy, as I found that the puppetry was actually taking my words into another, exciting dimension - one which I had never thought possible.
(Andrew Muir, writer)

The piece we developed, "the love of a good woman", was from the get go meant to be a very human piece of puppetry, not too showy, and with great dialogue and the story as the main element. although this was meant as a cross artform collaboration, after making, smashing, burning and remaking all the puppets and a few rewrites, me and Muir, we felt, succeeded in making a show that proved that this kind of work shouldn't be viewed as cross artform, but that good writing and puppetry should go hand in hand.
(Max Humphries, puppeteer)

I suppose the first and for me most important thing to remember with a collaboration, is that it's a shared experience. From writing in an attic over candlelight, a mouldy glass of port and yourself, suddenly there is somebody else in the room! Somebody who is as capable as you in terms of storylines, ideas, character traits, everything. You have to learn to listen, to make adjustments, to compromise, all these things. It's so important to be able to change what you thought was brilliant, but to your new pair of ears, is not quite as brilliant as you thought. You have to be so brave and trust. I think trust is the most important word that came out of our collaboration.
(Andrew Muir, writer)

This project has come about to show that puppets don't have to be clowns, that they can speak like actors and still make a connection with the audience (we made a few cry, yes!!!), puppets are naturally very funny, so I feel effort has to be put heavily into giving them other human emotions on stage in order for our art to progress
(Max Humphries, puppeteer)

As I was wrong to think that I would be solely responsible for writing the piece. We both had voices and we both had fantastic ideas, both with the story and with the puppets.
(Andrew Muir, writer)