Read more about the show, starting here.

For City Head, all Tom (the playwright) had was a basic short script; just Jeff and Doc. Doc discovers there is a city in Jeff’s head… and that was it. Tom and I got talking about how we could do the show, and Tom actually suggested that we have some miniature people as the city, a la It’s a Small World After All.

Initially, I had planned to have small miniature figures in marionette form; but this proved unweildy because of the nature of our show. It had to be tourable. I started to play with the idea of a pop-up book, with a base containing the puppets, and a ‘lid’ folding out to reveal the city. The main issue was that I didn’t want the puppeteers to have to bring out this huge set piece, and wanted something compact, that could be visible during scenes, but not so visible that it would detract from the other puppets (the muppets, as explained in my blog).

Well, one idea led to another and Tom and I agreed that Lego would be a great way to go. They are miniature, they provide a ‘wow’ factor, and they’re funny to see in a performance. I’ve wanted to do Lego puppetry for a while - and had been getting into a lot of Lego webcomics lately - so it seemed an ideal fit!

Photos follow, with each part of the design told in ‘chapters’, since the descriptions are so long. Read the next chapter here.