An international puppeteer who appeared on BBC and worked with the Walt Disney Company has died. Steve Lee, who lived in Brighton for decades, died peacefully on August 2 at Brighton General Hospital, having fought an acute bout of pneumonia. He was 73 years old.
He was the front of house in The Puppeteers’ Company, which he set up with his partner Peter Franklin in 1980, building on their experiences from the Da Silva Puppet Company where the two met. Steve, who was born in 1951 at Southampton General Hospital, was a talented photographer and a lover of all things theatrical. In 1968, after an inspirational visit to the International Puppet Festival in Colwyn Bay, he decided to become a puppeteer.
Between 1971 and 1980 Steve was employed as a puppeteer for the Da Silva Puppet Company. Together he and Peter wrote, designed, directed and performed small-scale productions for schools and arts centres. In 1980 the couple, who lived together in Charles Street, co-founded The Puppeteers’ Company.
It performed highly polished marionette cabaret on cruise liners across the world. Then for many years they toured nationally in schools and guested at arts festivals in Japan, Hong Kong and Europe, frequently performing several hundred shows in a year. Top Hats and Tales set in an old theatre and performed with ten different types of rod and hand puppets (Image: Simon Spencer) The company’s rod puppet production of the ballet Coppelia in 1984 was highly successful and was follow.