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CHRISTOPHER LEITH

  (1942 - 2015)
Nationality:    British
email:    n/a     Website:    n/a

Literary Agent:    n/a

Christopher Leith (born 5th July 1942, died 17th October 2015). After studying theatre design at Wimbledon School of Art and acting at Dartington College of Arts, Christopher Leith trained at the Little Angel Theatre under its founder, John Wright MBE, learning about puppet design, wood carving and marionette manipulation. Many years later, after John Wrights death, he became the theatres director and, in 1993, took over full responsibility for artistic policy, audience development and community outreach. He was able to employ and teach many people, tour in Britain and abroad  and even raise enough money to redevelop the theatre so as to present the widest possible range of puppet performance. At The Little Angel, Leith produced twenty new plays and directed fourteen of them, including The Ugly Duckling, Odessa and the Magic Goat, The Sleeping Beauty, The Elves and the Shoemaker, Webs, Witches and the Spider Queen, Joey Grimaldi King of Clowns, The Talkative Tortoise and Other Tall Tales, Stories from India, Go Noah Go from Agards Flood story set in the Carribean, The Many-Legged Musicians of Bremley Town, Bluebeard, The Secret Garden and The Tale of the Tsar Sultan from the story by Pushkin. After Christopher left the Little Angel Theatre, Sir Peter Hall saw his adaptation of the early English poem Beowulf and it was put on by the National Theatre, where he became the first resident puppeteer. He also ventured into two puppet operas:Judith and Holofernes and Haydns puppet opera, Philemon and Baucis. In fact, he has been involved in so many productions that Id need pages to list them all for you. Leith has worked for the British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal Opera House, English National Opera, the ICA, the Almeida Theatre and the London Palladium  and although he stresses that his first love is the theatre, hes also performed as a puppeteer in countless films and television shows, using the money he earned to carve more puppets. Christopher has written that music and singing have always been a vital part of his work. After training at Morley College, London, he later studied Gregorian chant with Dr Mary Berry. He sang the role of Macheath in Gays Beggars Opera and that of Apollo in Monteverdis Orfeo, as well as singing in many choirs in England and France. Being wheelchair bound due to the effects of motor neurone disease, which he developed in 2013, has not deterred him nor impeded his creative urges. With the help of his team, he has almost finished documenting and archiving his work, finding homes for his productions in museums and galleries across the UK (see Christopher Leith Helping Him Archive, Display And Document His Work by Guy Dartnell, vimeo). And currently hes working on four short plays using half-life-sized marionettes, to be performed in the round: A Handful of Leaves, based on A Ten-Foot Square Hut, the journal of Kamo no Chomei, a thirteenth century poet and Zen monk; The Hedley Kow, an Old English folk tale; Old Bangum, based on an English folk song, and 3 Stages for Lazarus. - http://hastingsonlinetimes.co.uk/

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below is a list of Christopher Leith's plays - click on a Play Title for more information

        3 Stages Of Lazarus