Mervyn Millar is a theatre director and puppetry specialist. He has directed productions at theatres including the National Theatre (Cottesloe), Battersea Arts Centre, Theatre Royal Plymouth and internationally. His collaboration with Kazuko Hohki and Andy Cox, Evidence for the Existence of Borrowers, won a Total Theatre Award and a Herald Angel Award. He works primarily as a puppet designer and as a director in the rehearsal room, working with a team of freelance makers to create the puppets.
Like many puppet makers, he initially learnt by making what he needed for his own shows. With further training at the London School of Puppetry, and by working with more experienced puppeteers including Sue Buckmaster, Steve Tiplady and Handspring, he began to refine his technique and craftsmanship and work as a collaborator with other directors and designers. Handspring Puppet Company have been an especially strong influence and he has worked with them on several productions including Tall Horse and Or You Could Kiss Me.
He was part of the creative team for War Horse for the National Theatre and Handspring from the first workshops, including appearing in the show for the first two seasons, and directed the puppetry in its London, New York, Toronto and Berlin productions. In 2012 and 2013 he was Artistic Director of the “Handspring UK” project, directing their production of Crow for the Festival 2012, and co-directing the Jubilee Salute for the National Theatre and Stiller at the Bayerische Staatschauspiel in Munich. Working with his new company Significant Object, Millar has designed puppets for Circus 1903, the National Theatre of Scotland, Sir Paul McCartney, Schauspielhaus Zürich and Burgtheater Vienna, amongst others. Since 2000 he has been Puppetry Associate for the RSC’s production of My Neighbour Totoro, working with master puppeteer Basil Twist to create the show and stage it at the Barbican and in the West End. The puppets for the show are made by Significant Object and the Jim Henson Creature Shop.
Mervyn is co-creator with designer Carl Robertshaw and producer Angie Bual of The Hatchling, a groundbreaking live art event in which a giant dragon puppet engages in two days of continuous improvisation in a city, ending with a spectacular transformation into a 20m wide kite which then takes off and flies.
In 2024 Mervyn was approached to create a major commission for Historic Royal Palaces, to fill the Tower of London with animals. The result, Imagining Animals, co-directed with choreographer Suzy Willson, will be presented at the Tower in the summers of 2026, 2027 and 2028.
He is the author of Puppetry: How to Do It, much of which was written as part of his Arts Foundation Fellowship year. His other books are The Horse’s Mouth, about the development process of War Horse, and The Journey of The Tall Horse, documenting a collaboration between two African puppet companies.
Millar’s approach to puppetry foregrounds the active role of the audience. Designers and performers connect imaginatively with the audience through the manipulated object. In recent years, a lot of Millar’s work has been in training performers and finding languages to communicate techniques of puppeteering, including an ongoing research project into the neurology of watching performing objects.
In his Fellowship year Millar worked on his book and designed and developed a live animation technique using a rotating lightbox, set into a table with clear panes above it, which relays live video feed from above, creating a layered space for storytelling that accommodates, silhouettes, found images, text and close-up camera work.