Client Story – Dead Puppet Society

Dead Puppet Society & Plastics Australia Polypropylene

We’ve been supplying the Dead Puppet Society in Wooloongabba for some time with polypropylene sheets of varying colours and thicknesses, and thought it was about time to find out what they were doing with it all.

The answer was brilliant!

What we use the polypropylene for:

The Dead Puppet Society team is currently hard at work fabricating everything for our reimagining of the production Peter and the Starcatcher that will be touring across Australia from October 2024. We’re using polypropylene for almost every puppet in Peter and the Starcatcher, from a flutter of butterflies to a Kraken. It’s an incredibly versatile and flexible material and we use it for the flapping wings of all our bird puppets and the fins of all our sea creature puppets. We’re also using it to create 3D structures. Some of the head and body elements of our puppets are also made of polypropylene sheet.

We’re also utilising polypropylene to create some of the costume elements for the show. For example, the beginning of Act 2 features an ensemble of mermaids based on various different sea creatures from a clownfish to a sea urchin who will all have polypropylene tails and headpieces. The teacher mermaid is the grandest of all and will have 3,888 individual polypropylene scales sewn together to create a 6m tail.

Polypropylene is our go to material for all of our puppet prototyping. We use it to create stand-ins for the final puppets for the actors to use during the rehearsal process. 

We use polypropylene because it’s an incredibly durable material. In our workshop the sheets are being hand stitched, riveted, and laser-cut. We’re using it to create things that have to be used regularly and survive a tour around the country, so durability is a necessity. Polypropylene also cuts well, and it comes in multiple colours so we can make a technicolour spectacle without having to paint every piece. It’s lightweight, so it’s good for actors as our puppeteers do multiple shows a day, most days of the week. Other materials would be a lot heavier by comparison and put a lot more strain on the actors, so a lightweight polypropylene sheet is the ideal choice.

The reason that we use Plastics Australia specifically for our polypropylene orders, is because of Plastics Australia’s quality recycling programme. The recyclability means we can create high-quality, durable puppets that will last the whole tour without compromising our environmentally-conscious values.

Below are some images from their production, Peter and the Starcatcher, touring Australia from October 2024.

Peter and the Starcatcher will be touring across Australia from October 2024. https://peterandthestarcatcher.com.au/tickets/