Puppetry Workshop Overview

This workshop intends to give participants the opportunity to learn basic performance skills using puppets in two distinct styles of puppetry.

The workshop will also give participants experience in performing original scenes that are generated from the ensemble exercises.

Defining Puppetry

Puppetry is the art of breathing life into an inanimate object through performance to create characters and communicate stories.

Puppetry has been used in notable Broadway theater shows like Lion King, Avenue Q, and Little Shop of Horrors. It has also been used in television and film, most notably by Jim Henson’s Muppets, and Sesame Street.

Americans are exposed to a small percentage of the variety and styles of art that can be found in puppetry. In other countries puppetry is a rich entertaining form of entertainment that is often traditional and spiritual. Puppetry can occasionally play a role in cultural identity, shadow puppetry in Indonesia, for example.

The use of puppetry in telling stories and exciting the audience’s imagination is a tradition that goes back further than recorded history, and some form of puppetry can be found in all cultures, ancient and present.

The use of puppetry in America has waned as a response to other forms of mass entertainment, yet it can still serve a vital purpose in engaging audiences with metaphors, textures, and exciting the natural human response to empathize with life in a small scale.

This workshop intends to give participants pragmatic exercises that will impart skills while creating performances that are meaningful.

Types of Puppetry

The workshop will focus on two specific styles of puppetry: Table-top puppets and Muppet-type puppets.

Table-top Puppets are a form of puppetry where the figure can be seen from head to toe, and is usually operated by more than one puppeteer. This style is derived from the Japanese style known as Bunraku, but also takes cues from Czech black puppetry, and black light puppetry. A commonality to all of these forms is simply that the puppeteer controls the figure with rods and usually stands directly behind the figure, often dressed in black.

Muppet-type puppets are hand puppets or mouth puppets. The puppet is operated from below the figure, and the figure is not seen below its waist. This style has emerged from puppets that were used in a traditional booth puppet show. In America this is the most popular style of puppetry due to generations that were brought up watching Sesame Street on television.

Each is important for a performer to be exposed to because of the commercial applications in both theater and television.

It should be noted that although table-top puppetry may not be as familiar as Muppet-type puppets, they are being used more and more in productions on stage and in television in the form of what is known as green-screen puppetry. It is assumed that a trained commercial puppeteer has skill in operating a puppet of this type as production use this style in conjunction with Muppet-type puppetry.

Evolution of

the workshop

This workshop has evolved out of experiences from many different disciplines of puppetry.

The facilitator is drawing direct experiences in theater and television from:

The Center for Puppetry Arts, Atlanta, GA

The Jim Henson Company, New York, NY

The Eugene O’NeillTheaterCenter’s annual Puppetry Conference

As well as working as a performer on such television shows as Crank Yankers, and LazyTown and the Disney Channel show the Book of Pooh.

In recent years this workshop has been presented as part of a seminar for the non-government organization No Strings International as part of their aid work in the developing world.

No Strings uses puppetry to teach important life-saving messages in the developing world and had conducted workshops in Kenya, the Philippines, Indonesia, and recently in Cambodia.

Exercises and Drills

For each style of puppetry the workshop breaks down into three distinct components.

• Basic repetitive performance drills
• Scene building exercise
• Rehearsing and presenting

Performance Drills

Puppetry is a visual performance art that is achieve through the craft of the puppet and the physical performance.

It requires a specialized set of performance instincts to create the illusion of life within the puppet world. These performance skills are learned through practicing with the puppet with physical exercises and training.

Scene Building

These exercises give participants the opportunity to generate short scenes that involve action and dialogue and then go through the process of turning the idea and script into a performance. ( The use of the word performance should be clarified to mean a performance within the structure of presenting within the workshop as a tool for critique and learning not presenting to the public)

Summary

This workshop is intended to be an introductory course on two important styles of commercial puppetry.

The workshop atmosphere is one that will foster collaboration, and team building.

The workshop is designed to expose people to a reliable method of creating scenes with puppets and

Scene Building

These exercises give participants the opportunity to generate short scenes that involve action and dialogue and then go through the process of turning the idea and script into a performance. ( The use of the word performance should be clarified to mean a performance within the structure of presenting within the workshop as a tool for critique and learning not presenting to the public)