Profile
Toby is a director, designer and puppeteer. He is also co-artistic director of Gyre & Gimble, a theatre company that places puppetry at the centre of its storytelling.
Work as director includes: Neil Gaiman’s The Wolves in the Walls (Little Angel Theatre); Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons: A Reimagining (Shakespeare’s Globe); The Hartlepool Monkey (UK tour); The Elephantom (National Theatre & West End); War Horse (associate puppetry director, West End).
Work as puppetry designer/director includes: 101 Dalmatians (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre); Spirited Away (Imperial Theatre, Tokyo); Animal Farm (UK tour); Pinocchio, Peter Pan, The Light Princess, My Brilliant Friend, Hansel & Gretel (National Theatre); The Boy and the Beast, A Robot in the Garden (Shiki Theatre Company, Japan); Don Quixote (RSC & West End); Running Wild (Chichester Festival Theatre, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre & UK tour); The Grinning Man (Bristol Old Vic & West End); Disney’s new staging of The Little Mermaid (in Holland, Russia & Japan); Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Royal Ballet); The Wind in the Willows (Royal Opera House & West End); Little Shop of Horrors (Manchester Royal Exchange); A Christmas Carol, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Firework-Maker’s Daughter, Peter Pan (Chichester Festival Theatre); Goodnight Mister Tom (West End & UK tour).
Work as a puppeteer includes: Hind of Joey in the original production of War Horse (National Theatre) before moving to Joey’s head for the subsequent West End transfer; Venus and Adonis (Royal Shakespeare Company); Angelo (Little Angel Theatre).
Qualifications include BA (First Class Hons) Theatre Practice: Puppetry, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.