BRITISH UNIMA SPOTLIGHT SERIES
Meet: Caitlin Duschenes (she/her) Young People’s Puppet Theatre Co-Founder • Educator • Puppeteer
Spotlight on: Caitlin Duschenes (she/her)
Young People’s Puppet Theatre Co-Founder • Educator • Puppeteer
🌐 Website: www.yppt.org.uk
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/youthpuppetsuk/
📘 Facebook: @YouthPuppetsUK
🎭 About Caitlin
Caitlin Duschenes is co-founder of the Young People’s Puppet Theatre (YPPT), an educational charity bringing large-scale marionette productions into schools across South East England. Rooted in a rich family legacy of puppetry, Caitlin’s work blends tradition, education, and collaboration—empowering thousands of young people to create and perform their own shows.
Her journey into puppetry isn’t just personal—it’s generational.
Beginning in 1920s Hamburg, Caitlin’s great-grandparents built a marionette theatre in their living room, performing for their local community. Despite being forced to leave Germany in the 1930s, the family’s connection to puppetry endured. Her grandfather Mario continued the tradition in Switzerland, staging Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale with marionettes in 1947.
That same production has echoed through the generations—revived multiple times by Caitlin’s father, Jeremy, and now forming a cornerstone of YPPT’s work today.
🧵 The Birth of YPPT
In the late 1990s, Jeremy Duschenes began running school-based puppet projects where children designed and built their own marionettes—an experience that left a lasting impact on students and teachers alike.
In 2014, inspired by the memory of those projects (and their unexpected social impact—including resolving classroom bullying), he revisited the idea on a larger scale.
Soon after, Caitlin joined him—and Young People’s Puppet Theatre was born.
Since 2015, YPPT has delivered:
🎭 155 productions
👧 5,000+ children engaged
🏫 Projects across schools throughout South East England
🎨 What Caitlin Creates
Caitlin has led around 50 YPPT projects, helping refine a unique model that balances creative freedom with scalable production.
Each project unfolds over the course of a year:
Puppet Making
Children design and build their own marionettes:
Standardised wooden body structures ensure durability and movement
Entirely child-designed heads, hands, feet, and costumes
Every visible element is uniquely created by the student
🎨 Set Design
Students collaborate to create:
Painted backdrop canvases
Props
Traditional “box-style” staging that allows large-scale participation
🎭 Performance
Each class becomes a full production team:
Puppeteers
Voice actors
Stage crew
Lighting & sound
A student Stage Manager
The productions are impressively technical, with a custom-built sliding stage system allowing complex scene changes in seconds.
With professional-grade touring stages (designed by Brilliant Stages / Production Park), school halls are transformed into fully realised theatres—raising both the stakes and the students’ ambitions.
❤️ Why It Matters
For Caitlin, the most powerful moments happen backstage:
Watching children collaborate, grow in confidence, and exceed their own expectations—whether that’s a quiet student finding their voice or a struggling child learning teamwork.
The result?
Beaming faces, proud families, and transformative experiences that extend far beyond the stage.
🌟 Inspiration
Marionettes are at the heart of Caitlin’s practice:
“Marionettes all the way—it’s what I’ve grown up with.”
Their complexity—often a barrier in professional contexts—becomes a strength in YPPT’s large-scale, collaborative model.
Her enduring inspiration is The Soldier’s Tale, a production deeply woven into her family’s history and artistic identity.
Performed across generations (1947, 1968, 1974, 1980, 2014, 2025—and soon 2026), it continues to challenge and inspire with its intricate staging—including the remarkable feat of a violin being passed and “played” between puppets.
🎉 Fun Fact
Outside puppetry, Caitlin is an accomplished dancer:
💃 She competes in Ballroom and Latin
🏆 And has represented England at the World Latin Formation Championships
🎬 Favourite Performances
🎭 The Magic Flute — Salzburger Marionettentheater
🐾 My Neighbour Totoro (West End) — particularly its innovative use of scale on stage
✨ Three Words That Sum Up Caitlin’s Practice
Legacy. Inspiring. Future.
🤝 Why She Supports British UNIMA
As a new member, Caitlin values the connection UNIMA provides:
Puppetry is often misunderstood as niche or purely for children—but organisations like British UNIMA bring together practitioners who understand its depth, complexity, and cultural importance.
🌟 Inspired? Be featured next.
Our Spotlight Series appears on the British UNIMA website, social media, and is signposted through a newsletter read by 500–1,000+ people every month, with 224k views on social media in the last 30 days.
If you’re a paid British UNIMA Member, we’d love to highlight your work too.