Shadow-puppets

Welcome to the magical world of shadow-puppet theatre and animation. Combining papercutting, stop-motion, real-time animation, lighting effects, storytelling, lots of fun, laughter, outtakes and imagination, Loïs offers beginners' level community shadow-puppet workshops as well as bespoke animation commissions. She also regularly collaborates with and creates shadow-puppets for Peoplescape Theatre. Shadow-puppets are a refreshing antidote to today's overly perfect digital and AI animation, evocative of nostalgia and past times, gloriously full of fun and quirky human handmade imperfection. 

Shadow puppetry is a traditional activity that appeals to every age group. It is an ancient art and a living folk tradition in China, India, Iran and Nepal. It is also known in Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Germany, France, and the United States. It is found in popular culture, including films, musicals, television shows, music videos, and video games. Silhouettes allow the viewer to fill in details of skin, hair and eye colour with their own imagination, hence the same figure can be relatable to many viewers. Papercutting itself goes back to the ancient royal courts of China but is similarly a living folk art tradition in many parts of the world to this day. It was popular in Europe in the Georgian and Victorian periods and is enjoying something of a rennaissance today.



Beginners' Level Community Co-creation Workshops

Using a fully sustainable range of materials and tools including card, paper, scissors, pattern shears, punches, string, masking tape and bicycle spokes, we create shadow puppets to populate and animate the film’s narratives. Fold-cut symmetry is a particularly speedy and effective technique. Collaborative shadow puppet theatre actively engages every participant. Storytelling is an inherent and often spontaneous element when shadow puppets begin to interact and take on a life of their own.

The Northern Lights and Beyond - A' the Airts Community Arts Centre, January 2026
Inspired by recent sightings of the Northern Lights in South-west Scotland. But who knows where we're headed...!


Valentine's Shadow Puppets - A' the Airts Community Arts Centre, February 2026
Celebrating Valentine's Day and early signs of Spring


We Wish You A Merry Christmas - A' the Airts Community Arts Centre, December 2025


Hallowe'en Shadow Puppets - A' the Airts Community Arts Centre, October 2025
Halloween Shadow Puppets

Peoplescape Theatre

Loïs has collaborated with multisensory theatrical producers Peoplescape Theatre since 2023, creating a range of shadow-puppets and other props to evoke character, place, season, texture and movement.

Bespoke shadow puppet commission with coloured lighting gels

Portable DIY Shadow Theatre

Loïs adapts a heavy duty racking unit to build her own portable DIY shadow theatre, attaching lamps, diffusion screens, cameras and mirrors where needed. Shadow puppets are cut out of 300 gsm card for durability, often incorporating scrap card to add tiny details, hinged with staples or scraps of wire to make articulated limbs, hands, feet, etc., and animated using bicycle spokes attached with masking tape to the relevant extremities.