Clown & Puppetry
One-day workshop with Katie Tranter

Join multi award-winning performer and theatre-maker Katie Tranter for a deep and supportive dive into the worlds of puppetry and clown.

Puppetry is the art of bringing inanimate objects to life. 
Clowning develops presence and playfulness with a direct audience engagement. 
The combination of puppetry and clown provides an opportunity to explore the potential of their relationship.

Can clowns do puppetry? Can puppets do clown?

Together we will discover the potential dynamics between the puppet, the performer, real and imagined worlds and the audience.

• Enhance your comic routines and express your inner world
• Develop your physicality and the ability to create a strong connection with an audience
• Discover how both art forms can explore social commentary, humour, and human emotions.

During the day you'll have the opportunity to work with different kinds of puppets ranging from objects and newspaper puppets to muppet style TV puppets.  

This workshop covers a broad range of techniques to help you hone your puppetry and clowning skills, including:

★  Core Principles – Breath, impulse, and audience connection
★   Puppetry Techniques – Focus, manipulation, and bringing objects to life
★   Clown Play – Failure, comic timing, and embracing the ridiculous
★   Devising Tasks – Creating routines with individual feedback

Who's this for?

It is for clowns, actors, puppeteers, improvisers, circus artists, physical performers, dancers, musicians, visual artists, street performers and the curious. All exercises will be tailored to the participants' needs and everyone will have to opportunity to work both individually and in groups with allocated time for reflection and feedback.

Previous Participant Feedback

★  'It's really spurred me on to keep up my creativity and put myself out there as a soloist... thank you for encouraging me to be myself.'
★  'Playful, intense, eye-opening.'
★   'Joyous, free flowing, liberating'
★  'Brilliantly facilitated' Rachael Walsh, Artistic Director, GirlBeatsWorld.

How it works?

★  Date & time:
Sunday 28 September
10am - 5pm

★  Venue:
The Spark Space
138a Church Road, Redfield
Bristol  BS5 9HH

★  Investment:
£100 - Supporter/ High earner
£90 - Full Price
£80 - Concession (low/no income, student)

EARLYBIRD DEAL:
​£75 if you pay before 31 August

"CLOWN AND..." WORKSHOP BUNDLE
All 4 workshops - £420 (save £120)

BOOKING: 
Email [email protected] to book a place

If you’re not sure if your level of experience would support you to join this workshop, please email us and we will be happy to help identify if the workshop is right for you.

Welcome to our Clown and… series – where clowning meets other creative forms!

Discover new dimensions of your creative practice by exploring the intersection of clowning with different artistic disciplines. How does the spontaneity, playfulness, and vulnerability of clown transform other modalities and vice versa?

Through this series, you’ll:

• Expand your creative range by blending clowning with unexpected forms
• Deepen your expression by embracing risk, curiosity, and joy
• Reimagine performance through the unique lens of the clown

Whether you're a performer, artist, or simply curious, join us to play, experiment, and uncover fresh ways to create. The clown is your guide - where will the journey take you?

Check out the full series:
Saturday 27 September
Clown & Improv
1-day workshop with Holly Meechan

Sunday 28 September
Clown & Puppetry
1-day workshop with Katie Tranter

Sat 18 & Sun 19 October
Clown & Slapstick Comedy
2-day workshop with Joe Dieffenbacher

Sat 6 & Sun 7 December
Clown & Archetypes
2-day workshop with Peta Lily

About the facilitator

Katie Tranter is a multi award-winning actor, musician, puppeteer, clown and magician. Her recent credits as a puppeteer include Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (Paramount), Recycled Rubbish (Theatre-Rites), Cinderella: A Fairytale (Northern Stage) and Knuckles (Paramount). 

Katie trained at Exeter University, National Youth Theatre and Escuela Nouveau Colombier specialising in mime. She has also trained with Philippe Gaulier, Phillip Zarrilli, Denise Perdikidis (Tantztheater Wuppertal), Avner Eisenberg, John Wright, Alex Coehlo, Nola Rae, Peta Lily, Jose Piris, Arturo Bernal and Diana Bernedo.

Her awards include Best Variety Show at Leicester Comedy Festival 2025 for her solo show 'The Great Divinator: Touched by Spirits and Audience's Choice Award at Prague Fringe Festival in 2019 for 'Canary' with Fun in the Oven Theatre. 

PRESS ABOUT KATIE
'jaw-droppingly funny'
Everything Theatre 
'good fun'
The Guardian 
'regularly stole the show...eminently watchable and very, very funny'
London Theatre 1 
‘a genius for comedy, and an ability to really get the audience on her side’
Spy in the Stalls 
'really fun!'
Jim Carrey

Katie is twice an OFFIE award finalist for her performances in Tall Stories’ The Canterville Ghost and Iris Theatre’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. She is co-creator of dark clown comedy Canary winning the Audience’s Choice Award at Prague Fringe Festival in 2019. Her solo show The Great Divinator: Touched by the Spirits has been nominated for Best Variety Show at Leicester Comedy Festival 2025 and heads to Edinburgh Fringe this summer in association with The Project People.
www.katietranter.com/puppeteer-skin

---