Cheryl ‘Chuck’ Brown
Cheryl Brown, better known in the industry as ‘Chuck’, studied theatre design at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Throughout her degree she focused on puppetry, taking great joy in developing designs through character studies, form, movement and material. Chuck is renowned within the field of puppetry for her attention to detail and quality of finish which enabled her to thrive as a freelance puppet maker for several leading puppet studios.
She has been working alongside Max Humphries for almost 20 years and in this time they have designed and created a variety of puppets in a range of scales and performance styles. Unit 9 puppets have a distinct style that was born from a mix of their skills and techniques together; Max taking the lead in the mechanisms and engineering with Chuck developing the sculpt, fabrication and finish of the puppets they create, producing puppets that move with ease and grace, and with a considered aesthetic which enhances the performance and emotion of the character. In 2022 they became Co-Studio Heads of the Unit 9 Puppet Workshop where they created the Olivier Award-winning Dinosaur World Live and Dragons and Mythical Beasts as well as children’s book adaptions, The Lion Inside and The Koala Who Could.