JAMIE HARRISON, magician and theatre director, has brought the Oompah Loompahs to life on the London stage, conjured up Tinkerbell out of a floating fireball in the National Theatre of Scotland’s Peter Pan and performed magic for David Cameron.

But for the last few years, the Glasgow-based founder of Vox Motus and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory designer has been turning his attention – and magical sleight of hand - to dragons.

“It’s been a scary show to make,” he grins. “But we’re very proud of it.”

Dragon – a story told without words, featuring puppetry, illusion and original music – is not scary because of the winged, fire-breathing creatures at its heart. The fear factor, says Jamie, comes from taking on a subject not often dealt with in theatre for young people – grief.

The dragon that lives alongside the young boy at the heart of the story grows ever more aggressive as the grief and pain he feels following the death of his mother start to overwhelm him, driving him apart from his father, sister and best friend.

“We’d been thrashing some ideas around, about a story involving the grieving process, and had initially thought about tackling divorce which is something I went through as a child,” explains Jamie, who set up Vox Motus with Candice Edmunds.

“Then we spoke to the writer, Oliver Emanuel, whose mum died when he in his 20s, and that started us thinking about grief after a child loses someone close to them and it fell into place.”

After presenting Dragon as an idea for a co-production with the National Theatre of Scotland, Jamie and Candice were over the moon when NTS suggested bringing in a third partner - Tianjin People’s Art Theatre in China.

“We spent two weeks doing research in China, which was incredible,” says Jamie. “We went there with very Western notions of dragons and dragon-slaying but the idea that this young boy would fight his dragon and overcome the grief didn’t seem quite right. That kind of hurt doesn’t go away.

“In China, we learned that in Eastern culture, dragons are not evil creatures to be overcome, they are there to be worked with, so it’s more about harmony and balance and that really changed the nature of our dragon.”

Jamie is part of the creative team for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the first West End musical version of the popular Roald Dahl tale. Recommended by the writer David Greig – who worked with Jamie on Peter Pan at NTS – Jamie had to reimagine a classic story – complete with Willy Wonka’s strange and slightly sinister sidekicks, the Oompah Loompahs – for a whole new generation.

“That was terrifying,” he nods. “Not scarier than Dragon, just scary in a different way. There was such expectation on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it was huge. But I love being part of it, working with Sam Mendes and the team – I learned and experienced so much.”

Jamie’s love of the theatre grew out of his talent as a magician. Recovering in hospital after damaging his leg when he was nine, Jamie was inspired by a visiting magician to learn some tricks. That led to a spot on ITV children's show, Gimme Five, and by the time he was 17, he was performing his magic act in hotels around Asia and Europe, in front of royalty and even for Prime Minister David Cameron.

“I still adore magic – and I can still pull out the odd card trick at parties – but the idea of telling stories in theatre appealed to me more,” he explains.

“It has been an amazing few years, and there are some exciting projects coming up. I’m delighted Dragon is touring again, in Glasgow and Dundee. It was a scary project, but we took a gamble and it paid off.”

Dragon is at the Citizens Theatre until October 10. Tickets, priced from £12.50, are available from the box office on 0141 429 0022. Visit www.citz.co.uk for more information.