 |
 |
|||||
 |
 |
 |
||||
 |
 |
|||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||||
|
||||||||||||
|
 |
|
||
designer, and director performance artist, Devon, England William Todd-Jones is a puppet designer, performer, director, and writer with a transAtlantic career in the theater, film, and television industry. His home base is in southwest England with his wife Carol Amos (a healer and child psychologist) and his children Lillian Rhiannon, David Taliesin, and Elynor Sahbran. Todd was raised in a mining area in the south of Wales, and is a native speaker of Welsh. He knew from an early age that he wanted to be a performer, not a miner; and as a young man he ended up in America teaching dance and dramatics at Bard College in New York. Performance work subsequently took him to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he met his life-partner. Together, they relocated to London in order to work on the set of the Brian Froud/Jim Henson film Labyrinth. London remained their home for many years, and their eldest children were born there. In the years after Labyrinth, Todd designed and performed creatures for various films, television series, and commercials. He played Aslan the lion, as well as a centaur, in the BBC's rendition of C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia; he played the starring role of Moppetop in the BAFTA-Award-nominated children's television series Moppetop's Shop, and he has peformed other creatures as diverse as a troll, a dancing mouse, and a three-toed sloth. He has worked on numerous feature films including the various Muppet movies, The Never-ending Story (filmed in Germany), Batman (filmed in London), and Pinocchio (filmed in Prague). He was the robot in the film version of Lost in Space, and head puppeteer for The Rat That Wrote. Over the years, he has worked with many of the most acclaimed directors, puppeteers, and designers in the film industry. Some years ago, Todd's design of a full-bodied rhinoceros costume for a Gerald Scarf stage production led to his involvement in the London-based charity Save the Rhino International. He has raised money for the charity by running marathons as a rhinoceros, appearing at fund-raising events, and walking across Africa (from sea level to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro) in the rhino costume, alongside Douglas Adams (author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). In 1997, Todd created an outdoor theater spectacle, Spirit of the Rhino Drum, for the rhino charity. He wrote, designed, and directed this beautiful and moving extravaganza on the theme of wildlife conservation, performed by African musicians, puppeteers, dancers, aerialists and acrobats. Spirit of the Rhino Drum has been performed in outdoor venues all across England, including the Glastonbury and Virgin 98 Festivals. A CD of the music, featuring some of the finest African musicians in England today, is available from Save the Rhino International. (The CD was produced by Duncan Bridgeman, best known for One Giant Leap.) Most recently, Todd designed puppets and full-body costumes for River of Kings, a puppetry festival in Bangkok, Thailand, performed in front of the Thai Royal Palace in January 2003. Todd, Carol, and their three children now live on Dartmoor, where they are renovating a huge Victorian house. Todd's interests include all things Welsh or mythic, good music, good food, all-night raves, his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, and arduous physical adventures. Carol's interests include women's mythology and spirituality, hands-on healing, Native American arts (she has Cherokee ancestry), dancing to all kinds of music, and travelling. Their children have performed with Spirit of the Rhino Drum and other shows, and think that growing up on international film sets is perfectly ordinary. |
||||
 |
||||
 |
||||
 |
||||