Ben Glasstone divides his time between teaching music to primary pupils and writing puppet plays.
His latest is a fresh version of The Emperor's New Clothes at Islington's Little Angel Theatre.
The Finsbury Park musician said: "It's a nice balance working with kids at Yerbury Primary half the week, and the rest of the time getting on with theatre projects. I wander around the area and all the children say hello to me. And because I make a lot of shows for children, I have a test bed to try my ideas out."
It was a Yerbury teacher who gave him the idea for The King of Nothing.
"Every year they put on a puppet show and I spotted the teacher holding two sticks, saying 'we are putting on The Emperor's New Clothes in two weeks, but the puppets haven't arrived - this is all we have', I thought a puppet show without puppets was a brilliant, playful idea. The story is all about what we are able to believe and convince others to believe, and the nature of theatre itself is suspension of disbelief - with puppets the ultimate suspension of disbelief. We ask people to believe a wooden spoon is an animate person, but amazingly they do."
Glasstone, who has composed music, directed and written numerous shows including Little Angel's The Mouse Queen, Alice in Wonderland and The Night Before Christmas, has penned six original songs and the script.
Aimed at ages 6-11, it starts with two actors saying they are con-men and that everything they say is a lie.
They then use an apparently improvised set and puppets to fool the audience into imagining all sorts of things that aren't there.
"It's a great story that everyone knows. Its DNA is so secure, you can be more playful with how you treat it. People say 'that's relevant' but it's always relevant to politics, how people construct their ideas of themselves, and present them to others."
Of course there are actual puppets in the show and Glasstone adds: "For children, who are in the process of learning when to take things at face value and when to peer behind the curtain, a puppet show without puppets is the ultimate idea of showing the workings behind the scenery. It's a very metatheatrical game. Two performers playing with the audience, create all the characters out of a bag - including a vain king obsessed with high fashion."
Glasstone loves how puppetry offers "a sense of scale in an intimate space". and believes it can enrich both adults and children alike.
"Children are ready to believe things and when they enter into something imaginatively they do so to an extreme - the power and intensity of their imagination means that things to them are very real and vivid. Puppetry in this country doesn't have the status of other artforms, but I always encourage adults to look at it because when they get the opportunity to access that primal response and be catapulted into the child's imagination, it's really powerful."
The King of Nothing runs at Little Angel Theatre, Dagmar Passage, N1 from September 24-November 20. Visit www.littleangeltheatre.com
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