I Am Turtle is at Exeter Fringe Festival on Friday 26th and Saturday 27th. Book tickets here.
Can you tell us about The Makeshift Ensemble, How did it get started and what is the ethos behind the company?
MakeShift came into being 4 yrs ago now when my main collaborator Laurence Aldridge and I met working on another show, we had similar

Your latest show is ‘I am Turtle’. What is the story about and what drew you to the subject matter? (Why is it important?)
After our last show ‘The Children in the Moon’ I wanted the next step for MakeShift to be a contemporary book adaptation so I started researching modern children’s books with an environmental message. ‘Turtle’s Song’ by Alan Brown and Artist Kim Toft really stood out, the lyrical nature of it is just beautiful and the images so strong. Keeping key elements of the narrative we have adapted it to include clear message s about our use of plastics and how it impacts both our world and the world of others. We were extremely lucky to have Norwich Puppet Theatre supporting us in the final making stages and

Can you tells us about the puppetry design and materials used?
MakeShift believe in practicing what we preach and as such our puppets and entire set for I am Turtle is made from recycled materials….the only thing bought new was glue for the puppets, because puppets like good glue. A lot of materials came from Dorset Scrap store and from my own kitchen in an experiment with how much plastic I could reuse creatively, doing this made me realise how much plastic my family used and we have since made huge steps to reduce this. For I am Turtle there are a lots of recycled fabrics, our two Turtle puppets are made largely from recycled hessian coffee bean sacks.