He was ten years old when he saw his first puppet show and knew what he wanted to do with his life.
“I saved every penny I had but when I wanted to pay for my ticket at
the box office, I didn’t have enough and I was turned away. I sat
down on the pavement and cried my heart out. A kind man saw me
and gave me a complimentary ticket. The man was John Wright, a
famous South African puppeteer who l
ater moved to London and
opened the Little Angel Marionette Theatre” (Van Eck, 2002).
After matriculating, he worked as a waiter on the South African Railways for a year
and for the following fourteen years, he worked in the printing industry in Cape Town. In the boarding house where he stayed, an art student had to build puppets and through this association, Van Eck became more involved in puppetry, as well as a member of UNIMA.
He won a bursary to study puppetry in Germany from mid-1972 to mid-1973. He studied in Bochum, Germany, and was greatly influenced by the rod puppeteer Hans Jurgen Fettig. He learnt the formal disciplines involved in puppet making, using traditional materials like papier-mâché, as well as the more modern skill of polystyrene sculpting.
Van Eck started working as a puppeteer at The Puppet Space (Space Theatre), Cape Town in 1973. He got involved in television work when he was commissioned to build a bun for an advertisement for Bull Brand Sausages, in 1975. The bun had to eat a sausage and then burp. Later in in 1976 he had to build 65 marionettes for the first puppet opera on television - 'Hansie en Grietjie'.
In October 1984, Van Eck started working for Sun International performing his own
puppet cabaret shows. During that year he visited the puppeteer Jim Gamble in
California, United States of America, where he was introduced to the type of cabaret puppets that he is known for, as well as to Gamble’s control for short string marionettes. He also met famous American puppeteers such as Jim Henson and Frank Oz of Muppet fame.
In 1986, after he had made a six-metre high gorilla for Sun City, Sun International
commissioned Van Eck to start a property department for Sun City. As his career was progressing in the properties department, so was his lifetime hobby of puppetry. All his spare time was devoted to making and manipulating puppets.
His career as props master for CAPAB and PACT as well as Sun City eventually led to his freelance career as a puppet maker, puppeteer, prop maker and sculptor. The one-man business, operated from home, became
known as Toby’s Puppet and Prop Shop. His portfolio included giant-size Springbok heads used by the Springbok rugby team; bright pink ostrich costumes and clown masks used by circuses and the centrepieces for the Miss World pageant at Sun City.
During 2004 Van Eck was invited to visit the puppeteer Fred Cowan in the United States where he performed and gave talks on puppetry. Van Eck had also taught puppetry on an ad hoc basis at Technikon Pretoria (currently the Tshwane University of Technology) since 1985 until 2003.
“Besides making a puppet and learning how to make it walk, you must learn how to put your soul into the puppet. Everybody has a gift. I love puppets and I think communicating with and through puppets is my gift. I like to entertain people with puppets. I like to make people laugh” (Van Eck, 2002).
He created hundreds of puppets for South African Television from the late 90s. Channels such as SABC, M-Net & KykNet's shortlived Koowee children's channel used him for various children's programmes such as 'School TV'; 'Pezoolies'; 'Pop Ster'; 'Thembi & Themba'; 'Froggies'; 'Wielie Wielie Walie' and many more.
He was also an avid puppet performer, known for his cabaret puppets, with which he had even performed in the North Pole.
Toby passed away in January of 2016 in his home in Olifantsfontein, South Africa.
