Five puppets that were due to show in the Curious School of Puppetry Festival at The Poly are suspected to have been stolen from a Truro theatre company.

Kneehigh Creative Theatre Company is offering a £1000 reward for the safe return of all five puppets and costumes.

Sarah Wright, who helped make the puppets, went to collect them from Kneehigh Barns for the Curious School of Puppetry festival in Falmouth on the 22nd January and saw that instruments had been moved around and the puppets were gone.

She asked around as her first thought was that someone must have moved or borrowed them.

After asking everyone involved in Kneehigh it is now suspected someone has taken to them.

Sarah Wright told Nub News:

"None of the puppets are replaceable. We can't make another Oskar and the others are so precious to me I never normally let them out of my sight for longer than a teaching day - but I needed to get them to Cornwall for the puppet school and was worried I'd be loading and unloaded on the street so thought safer at barns."

The missing puppets are two 'Oskar' puppets from the recent show The Tin Drum, both 36 inches high, made from foam and leather with carved wooden hands and two Red Girl puppets, one 22 inches high and one six inches high.

Both are made from foam, leather and fabric with wooden heads; and one carved wooden marionette, 22 inches high.

The company says the puppets are low in monetary value but are extremely precious and have huge sentimental value to the artists that made them.

The Kneehigh Barns are a collection of National Trust buildings on the cliffs above Gorran Haven that Kneehigh has rented for the past 30 years.

The company makes all their shows there, and use it to store costumes, props, puppets and instruments.

Kneehigh says they have noticed some unexplained activity in the costume store too, with things moved around and at least one item, a gold sequin suit jacket, has gone missing.

The company is hoping anyone with information will come forward or offer an anonymous delivery to the Kneehigh office in Truro.