This candid and revealing film shows Cheetham rehearsing and performing the exhibition’s narrative with puppets, experimenting with character development and exploring perceptions of rehearsal. The film captures Cheetham in front of the camera (with Alex Sarkisian behind it), as they both engage with and warm up to the show’s themes and characters. Together, they begin to incorporate elements of ‘psychodrama’ into the project, blending informal personal performance with the idea of non-performance.

The film begins to imagine a forgotten puppet show that takes place in and around ruined castle grounds, set in the year 2066, in the fictional town of Helldham, Angelshireland. The puppet show has been abandoned due to a mass puppeteer revolt. Meanwhile several characters together attempt to break up with the main character, the Castle.

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Puppets have ‘lives of their own’, and Cheetham is interested in how puppet play is used in theatrical, political, and therapeutic contexts, and how it can be used as an alternative mode of communication through role-play as a treatment for trauma.

The film examines the potential and ongoing failures of its creators through a certain consumer-driven fantasied moment(s) in time. It is rooted in contemplations around consumerist cultures, labours, and legacies. It also incorporates expanded forms of caricature, cartooning and character design. All are realised as a potential mode of personifying, exhausting, and evaporating the effects that environment, objects, and materials can have on communities over time.