Interview: Caroline Bowman, puppeteer in War Horse

Caroline Bowman recently joined the West End production of War Horse at the New London Theatre. She is one of the incredibly talented puppeteers who bring the mesmerising production to life night after night.

Celebrating its seventh year on the London stage, War Horse has now been seen by over 5 million people worldwide and was recently broadcast live for the first time as part of National Theatre Live.

Caroline studied puppetry at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Blind Summit offered to give her her first job upon graduating, which she happily accepted, building puppets for El Gato Con Botas, opening in New York in October 2010. She has since worked many more times with Blind Summit, both as a puppet-maker and also as a performer; most notably in the London Olympic Opening Ceremony where she operated the head of a massive hydraulic Captain Hook puppet in the NHS sequence. She also puppeteered the head of a five-metre long bird-dragon puppet in The Magic Flute on the world famous Bregenz Floating Stage in Austria.

She has worked on screen and stage as a puppeteer, and has made puppets for various companies, including Puppets With Guts, Third Party Productions, Old Saw Theatre, Slot Machine Theatre, and Watershed Productions. Caroline has worked in the puppet hospitals of both Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie and also Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox.

She has toured throughout the world both as a puppeteer and also with Albert & Friends Instant Circus, London’s premier youth circus, of which she was a part from age 10. In 2008, together with co-conspirator Charlotte Quartermaine, Caroline started The Rainbow Collectors with who she makes surreal interactive theatrical experiences, mainly for an adult audience, exploring the thin divide between beauty and the grotesque. Their children’s show, The Gingerbread Man, originally directed by Steve Tiplady, is a sell-out hit, and they have toured it intermittently for the last five years.

I recently spoke to Caroline about joining one of the West End’s biggest plays, what it’s like being part of such an established show and the magic of puppetry…

Are you enjoying your first few weeks in War Horse?

It’s been great. I couldn’t quite believe we’d be ready in time to do it and then suddenly we were! It’s been quite exciting!

You’ve worked all around the world, but did you ever think you would end up in the West End? 

Oh my goodness, it’s the funniest story because when I was 8 years old my grandpa took me and my sister to see Cats – which was on at the New London Theatre – and I thought, ‘that’s it, I’m going to be there’. I had several years when I thought I would probably do other things, and then somehow it happened and I’m on the stage where Cats was which is the closest I could have got to my childhood ambition… pretty mad really! I’m really excited for when my grandpa comes to see it, even though he can’t see that well any more he will be there in the front row!

What’s it like joining an established show like War Horse? Does it bring an added pressure?

Of course all of us want to do a good job, I think we all have our own reasons for wanting to tell this particular story. Out of all the shows in London at the moment - I haven’t seen them all of course [laughs] - there’s something about this show and the story and the importance of it that really speaks to me and I think a lot of the cast have very strong reasons for wanting to tell this particular story. I don’t feel so worried about whether I’m doing a good job compared to how it was done in the past, I’m telling this story and giving the story its life.

What do you think is the key to War Horse’s success?

The puppetry of course! In the UK we don’t have such a strong tradition of adult puppetry – I don’t mean Punch and Judy or little puppet shows – but puppetry used in the theatre, and in this show the puppetry is integral. We’re not pretending there is a real horse on stage and we’re not wishing we had a real horse or it’s a case of we have to make do with puppets, but we’re using the puppets as puppets and they have their own way of moving. There are certain things real horses can do which puppets can’t, and there are certain things puppets can do that real horses can’t. For example, we can fire a gun next to one of the horses and it doesn’t freak out and jump into the audience. 

I think it’s the puppetry which makes the piece so powerful…

There is a real power in puppets, I mean not everyone likes them but the majority of people are willing to suspend their disbelief. I think once you do that with puppets it almost takes you further than living actors or living animals. You can see it’s an object and your brain is telling you it’s an object, and yet at the same time you are having this emotional response towards it – that’s really powerful. I think people are intrigued with what these great horse puppets can do so I suppose that’s quite a big thing. Also, the anniversary of the first World War is coming up so I think people are feeling that we need to remember what happened.

Had you seen the show before being in it?

Yes, I saw it when it first opened at the National Theatre when I was in my first year at Central and we went on a school outing. I then saw it a couple of years later when it was at the New London, I was taken for a birthday treat. Then I saw it twice more, so had seen it four times before becoming part of it. Obviously each time it’s different, you know what to expect in a way, but each cast is different and it has some life about it. I think Michael Morpurgo is brilliant and his fans have been amazing.

What’s the atmosphere/vibe like among the cast backstage?

It’s lovely, considering the cast is now about 38 people it could be so bad and yet the general feeling is really nice. They are a really nice bunch of people and everyone is looking after each other. It’s a year-long thing for us which I think could be quite trapidatious but we’re all on good terms and it’s great, really great. We’re all keen and want to do a professional job. The story is so important and everybody is there ready to go. We have fun together. My dressing room is on the top level and we’re next to a dressing room full of ten boys who can be quite loud [laughs] but it’s all good.

I think puppetry is certainly making a comeback with successful shows such as War Horse and The Light Princess. Do you think it’s important that more theatre makers take that risk?

I think it’s really brilliant. There are other countries around the world where puppetry never lost its magic. There’s a theory that puppetry was a first art form in a way because people used to sit around fires and use objects – not necessarily fully functioning puppets, but you can use objects as puppets to relate a story. I think in the UK we have lost our tradition of forward-thinking innovative puppetry. We have lots of puppetry but it’s not like in Russia, France or China, for example, where there is a lot of tradition and it is a high art, we see it as a low art in this country. I think having this show in the West End makes people see that puppets are not just substitutes for actors but are a thing in their own right, providing a completely different form of telling a story or portraying something. 

The dualism of the puppet as an object representing a living thing is something you don’t get from a person, because when you see a person who is supposedly, say, dead on stage you sort of know that they are lying there and thinking about other things. However, when a puppet dies on stage, it dies and there’s nothing else, and if it comes back to life it really is remarkable because you know it hasn’t just been lying there thinking about its supper or something. You see, there is such power in puppetry and I think if this show can be like a stride forward for puppetry in the UK that’s brilliant. We need to open up the audience so we get more funding for puppetry which will enable people to become full-time puppeteers, not just doing it because they love it but because there is a demand for it because it is a beautiful art form and it has such power, so I think it’s great.

Interviewed by Andrew Tomlins (Editor)

War Horse is currently booking at the New London Theatre until Saturday 14th February 2015.
Please visit www.warhorseonstage.com for further information and tickets.

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