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. The DARKER Side of Puppetry - suitable for all professionals working in performance, physical theatre, acting, clowning and of course puppeteers.
2. Micro Cinema THEATRE - suitable for any performer, director, scenographer, animator and film maker.
3. 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.
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