Live shows are still put on at theatres nationwide, with London’s Little Angel Theatre and Norwich Puppet Theatre offering a year-round programme of home-produced puppet plays, as well as work by a diverse range of visiting puppet companies.

Increasingly, various forms of puppetry can be found co-existing on stage with actors or dancers to create the illusion of an extra dimension, as in the Royal National Theatre adaptation of Philip Pullman’s fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials. Michael Curry designed the daemons as ethereal animalistic puppets; manipulated by black-clothed operators, they closely shadow the actors, as physical manifestations of each character’s soul.

And for the smash-hit musical The Lion King, Julie Taymor designed more than 100 spectacular, large-scale puppets that were inspired by Asian and African puppetry.

Puppets can sometimes evoke unexpected reactions. In one of the dark cautionary tales for children in Heinrich Hoffman’s Shockheaded Peter, a boy bleeds to death after his thumbs are cut off as punishment for sucking them. Watching this adapted for the stage, the audience finds itself laughing uncontrollably at his terrible plight. Laughter is acceptable on this occasion though because he is, after all, just a puppet!

Jim Henson’s puppets replaced marionettes on television. The Muppets were designed in response to the medium: large, mobile mouths give the puppets wide-ranging expressions, which, in close-up, produces dynamic filmed dialogue. The Muppets have influenced generations of subsequent puppet shows.

The appeal of The Muppet Show is its ability to communicate to adults and children simultaneously. Parodies of familiar, well-known adult programmes ensured the show’s success and led to strong viewing figures. Puppets were elevated to a new level and gained a crossover appeal, attracting “kidult” viewing.

The abusive style of the hit 1980s satirical comedy TV show Spitting Image has parallels with Punch magazine. Grotesque latex puppets, created by top model-makers Peter Fluck and Roger Law, and voiced by top impressionists, were used to parody the rich, powerful and famous in a series of sketches. Screened from 1984-1996, among the people targeted were Mrs Thatcher and her ministers and the Royal Family.

When some of the Spitting Image puppets were sold at a charity auction in aid of the Hackney Empire theatre in east London, former deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine told the BBC, “I was an obscure member of the British Government, a common or garden Cabinet minister – and suddenly wherever I went I was a celebrity!”

Constance Nebel, of the Canadian Museum of Civilisation, believes that televised puppetry has enabled the development of new forms. By watching a video monitor, modern-day puppeteers can constantly adjust their puppets’ movements visually, rather than “sensing” the audience, as in a stage show.

The apparent growth in appreciation of puppetry may stem from the continuing success of animated films, which appeal to both adults and children. Recent releases Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride and Aardman’s Wallace And Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit both use animated puppets. Even digitally animated films refer to the articulated handmade quality associated with real puppets, as in Toy Story or Robots.

Puppets have also influenced the work of artist/makers Jo Lawrence and Julie Arkell, who both make puppet-like figures from varied media. Jo Lawrence’s “puppets” are constructed from everyday found objects, wood and fabric. Photographic faces instil the puppets with an innate identity, and some are animated in her films. Recent work by Julie Arkell was inspired after the sighting of some rod puppets in a tiny shop in Rome, which prompted her to make a Pinocchio and a miniature theatre. Her work generally has a theatrical quality, and figures and objects are often presented as sets.

Steve Tiplady, former artistic director of The Little Angel Theatre, is cautious about the future of puppetry. Speaking in The Guardian, he says, “Suddenly it is fashionable to use puppetry in shows and that’s wonderful. But puppetry has been on the cusp of making it big for such a long time. And people think that they can just shove a puppet into a show, and it will work…

“To be a good puppet performer you have to be able to concentrate so hard on the puppet that you disappear, and that goes against the grain with most actors.”

He also talks of puppetry’s need for an infrastructure, through investment in funding and training. “Until then,” he says, “places like The Little Angel will continue to survive on a knife-edge and people will continue to dismiss puppetry as just little shows for children.”

Lee Simpson, of the London-based Improbable Theatre, believes that the reputation of puppetry has been partly transformed by Tiplady’s contribution. “Ten years ago… we weren’t allowed to put the word ‘puppets’ in the publicity,” he says. “Now it seems you can’t move in theatre for the little buggers.”