[7] While working as a bank clerk in the early 1930s, Blackham read a book on puppetry and was inspired to put on a “little show on the dining-room table” for her family.
Eventually “so many friends came to see her puppet, that [she] took a loft over a stable in Kings Heath” in 1927, which became a small experimental theatre, The Ark.
Blackham ran The Ark with a group of friends, including Bernard Griffin, Gerald Shaw and Frances Norris.
It is the outcome of a revolt against the cramping conditions the modern playwrights have imposed upon theatre and against the spiritual weariness their fare induces.
Active until 1961, it put on performances each spring and summer, and toured during autumn and winter, playing at theatres, colleges and private houses.
[13] Between 1936 and 1958 Blackham would run an annual summer school[14] where participants would create their own puppets and visit the nearby Lanchester Marionettes Theatre in Malvern.
[16][17] Other puppeteers who worked in the company included: Mary Morley, Joyce Blackham, Gray Skipworth and Robert Tronson.
[25] Her experimental ideas included: During WWII Blackham toured extensively with a simpler theatre using glove puppets, as it was “impossible to obtain the transport for the complicated mechanism necessary for a string show”.
[33] In 1966, at the point of her retirement, she became the first British member of the French organisation, Union Internationale de la Marionette (UNIMA).