April's Puppet of the Month - Real Man Head

Aren't you one of the heads from The Heads? 

I've featured in quite a few Blind Summit shows. There are actually around 20 replicas of me - most are in storage but we keep a few to hand so that Mark and our Associate Artists can take them to workshops for puppet-play. 

I see. So how did you first come about?

Nick, inspired by the face of Tommy Lee Jones, sculpted a head out of clay then made a mould from silicone rubber, finally pumping in expanding foam to make me. 

I was commissioned by ROH2 in 2007 for their Firsts Festival, and a 20 minute sketch called Real Man, inspired by Jack London's Call of the Wild. 

I'm sure I've seen you in a dark corner of the BAC... 

You're right. I was used in Odde Angel, a 4 minute side-show scene in Punchdrunk's Masque of the Red Death (2008) where a labyrinth of rooms featured work inspired by Edgar Allen Poe stories. 

And then? 

The early versions of The Table had a 20-minute section of me, my replicas and hands flying across three frames to Lightning by Philip Glass. That was then developed into a full hour-long show, The Heads, that premiered at the Soho as part of London Mime Festival 2013. 

Read more about Nick's head-making process here