Sensing through materials

In my research of how materials for making theatre shadows and object theatre puppetry, I’ve come to see materials not just as tools, but as storytellers in their own right. They speak through texture, tension, movement, and resistance, each one offering cues, surprises, and emotional weight. In a world shaped by climate and change, what we create and what we create with matters more than ever.

My approach to sensing through materials has developed across different research phases. Through my PhD research, I began to shift from puppetry grounded primarily in manipulation and movement toward a practice of interrogating materials themselves. Listening to material behaviour became a way to inform character design, narrative development, and performative systems, rather than imposing movement from the outside. The projects below reflect how listening, material interrogation, and responsive systems have been explored and formalised over time.