Peter Scriven

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Peter Scriven (28 September 1930 – 13 October 1998) was an Australian puppeteer, writer and theatre producer who founded the Marionette Theatre of Australia and served as its artistic director. He helped establish puppetry as a respected art form in Australia. His shows The Tintookies (1956) and Little Fella Bindi toured across Australasia. The Tintookies was a marionette musical first staged at the Elizabethan Theatre in Sydney in 1956. After its success, Tintookie became the common name for the puppets used by Scriven’s company, formed under the Elizabethan Theatre Trust in 1965. The board included Sir Howard Beale, H.C. Coombs, Dorothy Helmrich, with Scriven as artistic director.

The Marionette Theatre produced original Australian puppet works, set up a training school, encouraged other groups, and imported overseas companies. It created large-scale, child-focused puppet shows with Australian themes for more than 20 years, including Little Fella Bindi (1958) and Norman Lindsay’s The Magic Pudding (1960). Bindi, the Aboriginal boy lead, was manipulated by Scriven, with a team of five puppeteers supervised by Igor Hyczka, plus a stage manager, a sound technician and a tour manager, Tony Gould (later head of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre). Later productions included The Explorers (about Burke and Wills) and The Water Babies. A film version of The Explorers was released in 1968 by Scriven’s Film World Pty. Ltd.

Scriven showed dedication to marionettes from a young age and used his own money to start his company. His puppets are kept in the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney. He was awarded an MBE in 1970 for services to theatre.