Christopher Leith (1942–2015) discovered puppetry at the age of seven after receiving Pelham Puppets for Christmas, setting the course for a distinguished career. He studied theatre design at Wimbledon School of Art and acting at Darlington College of Arts before training at the Little Angel Theatre under its founder, John Wright, gaining expertise in puppet design, carving and marionette manipulation. Following Wright’s death, Leith became the theatre’s director and, from 1993, led its artistic policy, audience development and community outreach. He trained a new generation of puppeteers, toured nationally and internationally, created twenty new plays and directed fourteen. His acclaimed adaptation of Beowulf brought him to the National Theatre at the invitation of Sir Peter Hall, making him the organisation’s first resident puppeteer. He also created the puppet operas Judith and Holofernes and Haydn’s Philemon and Baucis, carving the puppets and composing music for many of his productions.
After leaving the Little Angel in 2000, Leith settled in Hastings and developed the “Little Stage,” a new theatrical form using 18‑inch marionettes for which he carved the figures, wrote the scripts and composed the music. He created a cycle of miracle plays, completed numerous commissions, and continued performing across stage, film and television while teaching widely in the UK and abroad. Diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease in 2013, he remained committed to completing one final work, 3 Stages for Lazarus, begun before his illness progressed. A versatile and visionary artist, he championed the unique imaginative power of puppetry, observing that puppets “exist in a state which is both alive and dead at the same moment… The puppet is only alive in the audience’s imagination.”
