Gavin Glover
Puppeteer, Designer, Director, Mentor, Coach
Gavin Glover has always been inspired by the darker and more Absurdist narratives of Kafka, Lynch and Beckett, so he co-founded the theatre company Faulty Optic to see if puppets could also inhabit these mysterious and more metaphorical worlds. And they can.. The company went on to present a deliciously dark and unique style of puppet theatre for grown up audiences and toured all over the world for over 20 years.
“Since Faulty Optic I have worked with many different directors and performers and I have developed groundbreaking methods to introduce radical new concepts of Contemporary Puppetry and Micro-Cinema, not just to puppeteers, but to all theatre makers and artists.
Today, my goal is to inspire these new and emerging Creatives and to help them see what else puppetry can do for them. I encourage them to develop their own unique approach to puppetry using their own existing skill-sets through workshopping, artistic collaboration and consultation.”
Recent coaching commissions has seen him 'train' ghosts for the National Theatre of Scotland, 'tame' foul-mouthed pterodactyls for the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow and 'encourage' drunken bar fights at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin - each production using puppets that he have designed and built especially for them.
Gavin has also begun receiving commissions to make short Micro-cinema movies some of which have received critical acclaim from The Guardian, BBC’s Front Row and The Stage.
Training workshops include -
1. Micro Cinema THEATRE - suitable for any performer, director, scenographer, animator and film maker.
2. Micro Cinema TECHNIQUES - micro film making including the ever popular 'Make a mini ARTHOUSE movie' suitable for all film makers, animators, artists and theatre makers.
3. The DARKER Side of Puppetry - suitable for all professionals working in performance, physical theatre, acting, clowning and of course puppeteers.
4. Puppetry skills for Theatre - suitable for all professionals working in performance, physical theatre, acting, clowning and of course puppeteers.
Gavin is currently based both in Glasgow, UK and in Krakow, Poland and is always happy to discuss collaborations, coaching and mentoring sessions either face to face or online.
“...brilliant puppet theatre maker Gavin Glover”
Sunday Herald. Scotland
MCT workshop Gaudeamus Theatrum 2025 draktheatre.cz
photo credit: Tomáš Roček
PUPPETRY and TECHNOLOGIES Conference Gaudeamus Theatrum 2025 draktheatre.cz. photo credit Lukáš Veselý
FaultyOptic
theatre of animation
1987–2011
Blueface - main character from the show TunnelVision by Faulty Optic 1998
FaultyOptic broke down the concept of puppetry being just for kids by producing a mixture of dark surreal imagery, non-verbal narrative and mechanical theatre more suitable for an adult audience.
The strange tales that unfolded, the atmospheres of dislocated reality and oblique happenings were often described as Beckettian or Pythonesque.
Increasingly FaultyOptic explored the use of live-feed video projection, simple film animation and pre-recorded video.
The company toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Canada and the US often with the help of Arts Council England and The British Council.
The company folded in 2011.
See the faultyoptic archive:
@faultyoptic_archive
Faulty Optic have discovered a genre they have made their own: they are indeed masters of their universe. Dorothy Max Prior, Total Theatre magazine
A Punch and Judy for the Apocalyptic Age. Jane Alexander, City Limits
We are sucked into this weird world, part comic, part nightmare. The Guardian.
‘Beckettian' but we are given more ease than Beckett ever gives us.' The Irish Times.
Sounds cute but it isn't; the puppets are truly beautiful and their eerily impersonal energy animates a dream world whose alarming and vivid images stay with you the morning after. Very different; very good. Neil Bartlett, Time Out
Inconsequentiality. Absurdity. Incongruity. Fantastic and surreal imagery unlike anything seen before. Penny Francis, Animations Magazine
Such striking imagery abounds, rendered in puppetry and video animation. Sam Marlowe, The Times
Performances by Faulty Optic included
My Pig Speaks Latin 1988-1991
Toured Europe
Faulty Optic's first show. A trilogy with live music. Experimental and nicely dark.
Neil Bartlett said '..puppet theatre for grown-ups. On tiny, crowded stages, pig- and dog-headed marionettes, whey-faced chess pieces and strange animals clash with uncannily animated domestic trivia. Statues spit, Death pushes his victims down the toilet and an endearingly rude armadillo is disembowelled by a calmly idiotic clown. Sounds cute but it isn't; the puppets are truly beautiful and their eerily impersonal energy animates a dream world whose alarming and vivid images stay with you the morning after. Very different; very good'
Snuffhouse Dustlouse 1991-2005
Toured worldwide
Breathing machines, bottled pets, nightmarish flashbacks and a hungry intruder.
Lyn Gardner from The Guardian wrote '..although the wind howls continually as if Mabel has become stranded in some emotional polar wasteland, there is a wicked and irresistible humour at work here too, both in the Heath Robinson-ish contraption that is Mabel's lifeline and in the absurdities of her existence. Insanity is never far away, and yet the great trick of the performance is that it convinces you of the logic of everything that Mabel does, however ridiculous and however appalling.'
Darwin’s Dead Herring 1993-1996
Toured Europe
A hapless bunny eared creator, a scheming Darwin, a handful of rampant windup dogs and inevitably a new world order.
Kenneth Rea said 'Faulty Optic stands out with an imagination as disturbing as it is original'
TunnelVision 1997-2006
Toured Europe
Frustrated tea parties and rumbling carpets. Includes live feed video on a nightmarish miniature rollercoaster.
Lyn Gardner from The Guardian said: 'A convict puppet attempts to escape from a hermit-like existence in a Wilton-carpeted cell but discovers dreams can be even more nightmarish. It's a technical marvel, particularly in its finale, in which a tiny video camera invites the audience on a fairground ride to hell. But its greatest achievement is to create its own unique world, a front-room Colditz at which you have to laugh, otherwise you'd weep'
Soiled 2003-04
Toured Europe
A twisted love story, clumsy clowns and a trip to Hades
Dorothy Max Prior from Total Theatre said '..dark, surreal, funny, unsettling, yet somehow always life-enhancing with a carnivalesque pleasure in turning the world upside down and examining the real physical matter of existence.'
Licked 2004
Toured UK
Spoiled picnics, boisterous siblings and a long tongued lady hiding in the woods!
Collaboration with OperaNorth. Animation, live percussion and opera.
Horsehead 2005-2006
Toured UK
A desolate sanatorium, a pint sized porter, a clown with a bayonet and a shattered love between two ends of a pantomime horse.
Susannah Clapp from The Observer said 'The most macabre, upsetting and funniest scene is projected on to a video screen… what follows takes puppets into a region of horror which would make Sooty poo in his pants'
Dead Wedding 2007
Toured UK
Frenzied scrubbings, wobbly legs and some very angry Bacchae.
Together with contemporary composer Mira Calix, we went to Hades to pick up where the ancient myth of Orpheus and Eurydice left off.
Commissioned by the Manchester International Festival and Opera North Projects.
FishClayPerspex 2009-2010
Toured Europe
Incidences based upon chance, futility, expectation, doubt and the turmoil caused by the flailings and failings of the human mind.
Caroline McGinn from Time Out said ‘..it boasts the best pincer legged ballet by armless men on polystyrene that I’ve ever seen.’