What Is Puppetry?

I believe puppetry is a unique art form that involves taking inanimate objects and giving them life.  Puppetry can be something as simple as attaching eyes to your index finger to create a hand puppet, or something as complex as constructing a life size animal out of wood, plastic and leather as we see in War Horse.  What I find so unique about puppetry is that it can be created using virtually any object, as we saw over various projects this semester.  Puppets can be assembled using a conglomeration of felts, fabrics, plastics and wires, but can also be portrayed using cardboard cutouts placed against a back-lit screen.  I would say that there is no strict definition to puppetry, because it could be something totally different depending on who you ask.  A Bunraku puppeteer's definition may be completely different than a Sesame Street puppeteer's definition.  Really, a puppet can be whatever you want it to be.

What is Puppetry?

I believe Puppetry is a tool to used to convey a story. Puppetry encompasses so many genres, and can be as simple as a shadow puppet made out of hand shapes to an intricate puppet that emerges from the depths of the ocean. Puppetry is used when other forms of theater, are unable to get the story across as well as puppetry can. Puppetry draws the viewer in and asks the viewers to suspend their disbelief and accept that inanimate objects can be personified and morphed into expressive and emotive characters. For example in La Jolla Playhouses' production of Sea Foam Sleep Walk, using an actor would not have had the same effect as the larger than life goddess rising from the ocean, however, the audience was aware that the goddess was not human. Puppetry allows an audience to interact on an intellectual level with the performance believing to or not believing that the puppets have morphed into the characters they portray.

What is puppetry?

Puppetry is an art that has what seems to be an almost infinite range. It's really hard to define, because puppets are never just one thing, and are used in several spheres of performance. Puppets can be anything from body parts to anthropomorphic objects to Muppets to large scale paper mache (and even more) It's hard to define puppetry because an art that can go from bunraku to shadows seems almost incomprehensible, and I think that that might be the point. Puppetry is a way of anthropomorphizing things that do not normally have a voice or character in order to better communicate ideas, needs, and images, as well as a way to cope with an uncontrollable world by manipulating something that IS controllable.

Genty Heads video

Cannibal puppet???

What is puppetry?

From Jackson:

I believe puppetry is a style of performance in which a performer utilizes an object or figure (whether it be a material thing, or a part of their own body) to make it appear to be alive or represent something that is really is not. Through many different styles of puppetry, different puppets are made for different purposes of the performance. It requires patience and commitment to the art of not only performing with the puppets, but creating them as well.

What is puppetry?

I believe puppetry is an extremely complex and multifaceted art form; encompassing carpentry, painting, and costume skills, as well as voice and acting skills that must make an inanimate object come alive. Above all, it involves cooperation--whether someone makes a puppet for someone else to awaken, or if multiple people must collaborate to create or animate a puppet. Though puppetry can be entertaining and fun, there is certainly a lot of labor, dedication, and forethought that goes into it.

Bread & Puppet is 50 years old

TCG article about Bread & Puppet Theatre, a company that used large scale puppets for political commentary.

War Horse Puppet Joey Meets Two Real Horses

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1q9TXcng7o