Ivan Thorley
Creative Director & Founder — Puppets with Guts
Ivan is a designer, maker and creative director focused on living storytelling at scale — crafting experiences that invite people inside stories, not just in front of them.
He founded Puppets with Guts to explore what happens when giant puppets, bold visual worlds and participatory design meet big spaces. Over more than a decade he has led the company’s evolution from outdoor arts and large-scale puppetry into story worlds that blend craft, agency, presence and shared attention.
Ivan holds New Zealand, Australian and UK citizenship, giving him a genuinely international perspective on making work for diverse audiences and contexts. His education and early professional training took place across New Zealand, Australia, and United Kingdom, shaping a practice rooted in dance, devised theatre, creative technology, outdoor arts, physical storytelling, and design & making. This transnational background continues to inform his approach to collaboration, participation and storytelling at scale, particularly in work that bridges civic space, culture and community.
What Ivan does
Ivan leads the studio’s creative vision, working across:
Concept and world development — shaping the imaginative ground from which stories grow
Collaborative design — partnering with artists, engineers, communities and commissioners to build frameworks that support participation and meaning
Project leadership — guiding ambitious public performance, procession and story world commissions from idea to delivery
Creative strategy — helping organisations think differently about how stories live in space and involve people
His work is grounded in physical storytelling — where bodies, movement and environment shape experience — and driven by a belief that stories can expand how we see ourselves, each other and our shared spaces.
Background and practice
Ivan’s creative practice emerged from dance, devised physical & visual performance, creative technology, outdoor theatre, and puppetry. Early in his career he worked with devised theatre companies and spectacle makers where he learned how scale, durability and design impact lived experience.
That early foundation in craft and outdoor performance proved a platform for thinking bigger about how do we design experiences that:
invite choice and participation?
encourage exploration and discovery?
work fluidly across landscapes, streets and civic environments?
These questions now shape both his personal practice and the company’s direction.
Ivan’s approach
Ivan believes:
Stories are best understood through action, not observation
Design should enable, not direct — giving people room to shape what happens
World-building is the groundwork for meaning and agency
Big spaces demand systems and tools that are robust and generous
He combines practical making skills with a curiosity about how we relate to environment, ritual, culture and movement.
Selected work
Among Ivan’s creative leadership roles are:
Zee and the City — a large-scale street adventure blending puppet, music and narrative
The Lips — a big-puppet, collective singalong phenomenon
Gnomus — a gentle giant figure connecting audiences with place, wonder and care
Large-scale community participation programmes linked to touring performance work
Puppetry and design contributions for major collaborative events and media projects
Speaking, mentoring and creative advocacy
Ivan regularly contributes to discussions on:
the future of storytelling in public and civic contexts
participatory design and audience agency
large-scale performance systems
creative leadership in hybrid performance forms
Get in touch to explore commissioning, collaboration or creative leadership opportunities with Ivan.