Roger Titley

Roger Titley (?-) is a puppet-maker.

Contribution to South African theatre, film, media and performance

Roger Titley began building puppets with Gary Friedman for their company, Suspended Animation, based in Johannesburg in 1985. He soon became involved with puppet-related creatures and effects for film. Much of this work needed to be hyper-realistic and Titley made use of silicone, urethane and other advanced materials to achieve the required results. Some of the work he produced includes elephants hatching from eggs for IBM, a crocodile that loses its teeth for Toyota Hilux, props and creatures for the BBC’s Walking with Cavemen, a flying ostrich for Microsoft, and a bungee jumping baby for Vodacom.

In 2009, he moved to more low-tech puppetry, designing creatures in white polyethylene and is now mostly involved with live performance events and workshops internationally. These puppets are designed for easy assembly to allow people who have had no previous involvement in the arts to experience hands-on building and performance. Although the shapes and finishes are stylized, he still focuses on achieving reality and fluidity in the movement of these creatures. Roger Titley has been involved in public workshops in Austria, Turkey, Spain and Finland where thousands of people have built the creatures and performed in parades. His puppets have also been utilized in professional productions in South Africa, Switzerland, Turkmenistan and Dubai. In 2010, he was commissioned to create an oversized beetle and thirteen life-sized elephants for the opening and closing ceremonies of the FIFA Soccer World Cup.

Sources

https://wepa.unima.org/en/south-africa/

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