Mordred Llewelyn Jones
Mordred is a queer and autistic performer with a background in theatre, Shakespeare, and burlesque. Despite being an avid watcher of Sesame Street and other puppet based TV shows as a child, Mordred only started performing with puppets quite recently. While attending a ‘Moby and Puddle’ puppet workshop in July 2024, as part of an adults acting and cabaret course, Mordred’s childhood interest in puppets was rekindled. He started his puppetry journey by helping ‘Moby and Puddle’ as a volunteer assistant puppeteer at Plymouth pirate weekend (May 2025), and in their film ‘Dreaded’ (Oct 2025).
Then inspiration struck in the form of Jorge, Mordred’s first puppet character. Jorge is a silly orange cat with infinite energy and a catnip problem. Since his stage debut in Nov 2025, Jorge has been in four comedy sketches and has recently gotten his own YouTube channel and Instagram account. Mordred hopes to make regular content for Jorge, branching out into short films, reels and art. Yet Mordred also wants to stay true to Jorge’s roots and plans to continue Jorge’s live performances at shows hosted by the Plymouth based cabaret collective, ‘Mrs Cliche’s Cabaret Naivete.’
Although Jorge started off as a readymade white snoof exterior which Mordred customised, this sparked a puppetry bug that one puppet alone could not satisfy. Since then Mordred has made two sock puppets, this time completely from scratch. Nippy, the plant, and Tickle, the ghost of an electric eel. Puppet making then led to prop making (for Jorge’s sketches), which is quickly becoming one of Mordred’s favourite parts of project development and is an invaluable skill regarding his non-puppetry based cabaret acts too.
Mordred says that one of his favourite things about puppetry is how accessible it can be. As someone with autism and hidden disabilities, things like eye contact/physical touch/facial expressions can make traditional acting feel overwhelming for Mordred. Puppetry allows him to do what he loves and perform but in a more accessible way, emoting through physically present characters that allow him the space he needs without robbing the audience of that much needed connection. He feels both film and theatre could learn a lot, about both accessibility and general creativity, if they embraced puppetry more.
