ABOUT
Hello, my name is David Hellyer and I have been performing as a puppeteer since the age of 10. I first got my inspiration to perform after seeing my Dad use puppets in the local Sunday School. Starting out with a glove puppet like most children do I realised I had an ability to entertain audiences large and small. At the end of Secondary School when I was 16 Harry Barrett (Founder of One Way UK) invited me to travel to America with him to attend the International Festival of Christian Puppetry (I-Fest). Thankfully I took Harry up on the offer and not only attended but walked away from the experience with one of the top awards and a new passion for performance! The next year I returned to I-Fest as a “Dream Team” member and performed under the direction of Christy Watkins and Debra Fader. Performing with the Dream Team gave me the opportunity to meet really talented performers and puppet designers like Dave Privett, Todd Leibenow, David Pannabecker, David Simpich and Doug Nearpass. I visited I-Fest 5 times consecutively, appearing in the Dream Team twice before taking a break from puppetry altogether.
After taking a break for two years (focussing on my noisier past time of being a DJ) I decided to return to the world of puppetry. Having had my eyes opened to bigger creative possibilities on my visits to I-Fest I decided to take on my ultimate goal, to design and build my own puppet characters. Thus Hellyer’s Puppet Workshop was born. My first puppet design was the “Aliesaur” which you can see in the photo below. I built him with no pattern and no plan of where it was going out of some scraps of antron fleece I had bought in America. In truth it started out as a finger puppet and gradually got larger as I became more confident with a needle and thread. Since then I have been fortunate enough to have designed and built many more characters!
There is a great strength to having a creative family... My wife Shelley loves getting involved with finishing off characters, eye, feather and detail placements are her forte. My brothers Matthew and Adam are a great help with artistic direction; Adam has provided concept sketches for some of my first characters (as well as designing our lovely logo!) and Matthew is always suggesting new video and internet-related options to explore. My parents Peter and Diane still perform with local puppet teams and have regularly tested out new puppet characters for me.
The most exciting addition to Hellyer's Puppet Workshop was not anything that resulted from my sewing machine... it was our son Samuel, born in November 2009.
The most exciting addition to Hellyer's Puppet Workshop was not anything that resulted from my sewing machine... it was our son Samuel, born in November 2009.
