The Tintookies were famous amongst Australian children in the late 1950s and the 1960s, before television had taken over the role of children’s entertainment. Going to the theatre to see the Tintookies was a special treat during school holidays.
Who Were the Tintookies?
The Tintookies were marionettes — puppets on strings — and they were founded by Australian puppeteer Peter Scriven.
In 1966 the Tintookies came to Western Australia, for the 14th Annual Festival of Perth. The Festival program booklet gives us some background about Peter Scriven and the Tintookies:
“In the years 1956 to 1960, Peter Scriven’s stage productions of the original Tintookies, Little Fella Bindi and The Magic Pudding, as well as his work in the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s, popular television series, Sebastian the Fox, built up a children’s audience numbering countless thousands in all States.
“During the past several years while Peter Scriven has been travelling and studying overseas, children’s theatre in Australia has missed the Tintookies with all their colour, excitement and simple fantasy of youth.
“The Marionette Theatre of Australia is proud to make its first presentation this reproduction of the original Tintookies. Peter Scriven returns because he finds pleasure and enjoyment in his craft. The Tintookies come to meet old friends and to win new ones”
As a child I had an abiding interest in puppets and marionettes, and in 1960 our family went to see the Tintookies production of “The Magic Pudding” in Melbourne during their tour of Australia that year.
By 1966 we were living in Perth, where once again we had the opportunity to see the Tintookies. I can recall sitting in the Playhouse Theatre and watching spellbound the wonderful stories replete with music and songs, played out on the puppet stage.
The Tintookies performed to a pre-recorded soundtrack played from reel-to-reel tape. These were sophisticated productions, with original music and songs and complex studio recordings of musical arrangements.
I don’t know how it came about, whether it was my mother or father who organised it, but it was arranged I could stay for the rest of that day or return the next day and spend many hours backstage watching the production.
Memories of Backstage at the Tintookies
The marionettes we had at home were less than 300mm (one foot) high— amply tall enough for our home marionette theatre which had a proscenium only about 500mm wide.
In contrast, the Tintookies were much larger marionettes — around 30 inches high. They needed to be that large to be adequately visible on the stage of theatres designed for productions with human actors.
Still, they were less than half the height of a person, and so they performed in their own marionette theatre, a structure with its own stage and proscenium that was erected on the stage of a public theatre. In Perth this was the Playhouse Theatre.
The Tintookies marionette theatre had a gantry positioned over the stage from which the puppeteers could operate each character.
Operating a marionette that large required a well-designed control mechanism. The designers of the Tintookies had developed an ingenious control for each marionette.
Each of these controls had a large hook, fabricated from thick steel wire, which could be hung over a rail on the gantry. In this position the puppet character would be standing upright and stationary. However it was still possible for an operator to move the arms or wobble the control to provide some movement to the character. In this way, characters who were not involved in the current action could be “parked” by an operator with minimal manipulation required, while the operator perhaps attended to other characters.
Another benefit of the design was a removable bar at the front of the control, used to operate the legs when a character needed to walk around on the stage. This removable bar could be hooked onto the main part of the control with the aid of a piece of piano wire formed into a semi-circle. A corresponding piece of piano wire on the bar was bent into a shallow rectangle thus allowing it to be easily and quickly slipped over the rounded piece of piano wire without needing to mess with small hooks. It worked very well.
One of my prize possessions after that day was a spare Tintookie marionette control which the puppeteers gave me. It was missing its removable bar for operating the legs. But that was no impediment, for once back at home I soon procured some piano wire and fabricated a replacement leg bar, then went on to make a few replicas of the full control for use with our own marionettes.
Fate of the Tintookies
Some years later it was reported in the press that a fire had destroyed the Sydney warehouse where the Tintookies and their production scenery, costumes, and so on had been stored. And in the years following I recall reports that Peter Scriven had relocated to southeast Asia and was doing puppeteering there. Perhaps the loss of the Tintookies was a great blow to him.
There is a detailed biography of Peter Scriven and Tintookies on Wikipedia—see the reference below.
References
Article about Penny Hall, puppeteer:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/142507579
Detailed biography of Peter Scriven and the Tintookies on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Scriven
Original Tintookies theatre program:
http://thetrust.org.au/pdf/trust-activities/TA_tintookies-the.pdf