Explore some of the many performance skills and styles to bring them to life onstage.
Puppetry Performance is a weekend course which will examine some of the multiple forms of puppetry used across theatre and filmed productions. Participants will be introduced to hand, object, rod, tabletop, moving-mouth and Bunraku styles, and to the basic techniques used to animate a puppet.
Puppetry combines elements of design, engineering, illustration, sculpture, painting, performance and fabrication. This workshop will consider each of these elements, while focusing primarily on the performative aspects of puppetry.
On Day 1 we will explore the key attributes and principles used when bringing a puppet to life. We will begin with a puppet that requires no fabrication – the human hand – and develop a vocabulary for considering puppetry performance. From there we will progress to ever more slightly advanced puppets – object, sock, rod and table-top. We will create simplified versions of each and consider their unique performance elements.
On Day 2 we will continue the exploration and advance to working in groups, creating and performing with a 2-person moving-mouth style puppet and ending our exploration with a three-person Bunraku-style puppet.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
– Differentiate between different types of puppetry.
– Describe different types of puppetry techniques.
– Demonstrate the key skills required when giving “life” to a puppet.
– Understand some basic elements of puppet fabrication techniques.
– Analyse and evaluate puppetry performance.
Who the course is for:
– Prior experience is not necessary; the course will cater to all levels of experience.- People with a general interest in puppetry.
– Theatre-makers looking to incorporate puppetry into their work.
– Actors, dancers and other physical performers seeking to develop additional skills using puppetry as a performance medium for theatre and film.