Puppets & Puppet Theatre is essential reading for everyone interested in making and performing with puppets. It concentrates on designing, making and performing with the main types of puppet, and is extensively illustrated in full colour throughout.Topics covered include: nature and heritage of puppet theatre; the anatomy of a puppet, its design and structure; materials and methods for sculpting, modelling and casting; step-by-step instructions for making glove, hand, rod and shadow puppets & marionettes; puppet control and manipulation; staging principles, stage and scenery design; principles of sound & lighting and finally, organisation of a show.
Playwriting for Puppet Theatre provides a foundation for those puppeteers, teachers and librarians who want to develop suitable scripts for puppet theatre. Mattson explores the difference between traditional theatre and puppet theatre and notes the special characteristics of the various puppets. The important aspects of script writing are then addressed. She considers the many general questions which must be answered by the playwright: the type of puppet to be used, the audience, and availability of resources and facilities. Suggestions are then given for dramatizing original ideas and for adapting well-known stories. The chapter on plot development emphasizes the importance of perspective, transitional material and the need for action. One chapter proposes various ways to develop a character through dialogue, names, and behavior. Another chapter demonstrates how the use of rhyme can add interest and humor to a puppet play. Teachers will find suggestions on how to develop a play on a specific theme or about a specific character. Some attention is also given to the mechanics of writing a play. Includes a group of puppet plays which have been successfully performed by Seattle Puppetory Theatre. Among them are Rumplestiltskin, The Princess and the Pea, The Bad-Tempered Wife, The Golden Axe, The Swineherd, and The Fisherman and His Wife. Production notes follow each script. Several samples of manipulation charts are included which may be used as an aid in blocking the puppets and the puppeteers for the various hand puppet productions.
Shadow Puppets and Shadow Play is a comprehensive guide to the design, construction and manipulation and presentation of shadow puppets, considered by many to be the oldest puppet theatre tradition. Traditional shadow play techniques, together with modern materials and methods and recent explorations into theatre of shadows, are explained with precision and clarity, and illustrated by photographs that include the work of some of the finest shadow players in the world. Topics covered include an introduction to shadow play, its traditions and the principles of shadow puppet design; advice on materials and methods for constructing and controlling traditional shadow puppets and scenery; step-by-step instructions for adding detail and decoration and creating transculent figures in full-colour; detailed methods for constructing shadow theatres using a wide range of lighting techniques; techniques of shadow puppet performance and contemporary explorations with shadow play; and instructions for making animated, silhouette films with digital photography. Lavishly illustrated throughout, Shadow Puppets and Shadow Play sets out detailed instructions for making and presenting shadow puppets by traditional methods and with the latest materials and techniques. Superbly illustrated with 420 colour photographs and helpful tips and suggestions.
In this fascinating and colorful book, researcher and performer John McCormick focuses on the marionette world of Victorian Britain between its heyday after 1860 and its waning years from 1895 to 1914. Situating the rich and diverse puppet theatre in the context of entertainment culture, he explores both the aesthetics of these dancing dolls and their sociocultural significance in their life and time. The history of marionette performances is interwoven with live-actor performances and with the entire gamut of annual fairs, portable and permanent theatres, music halls, magic lantern shows, waxworks, panoramas, and sideshows. McCormick has drawn upon advertisements in the Era, an entertainment paper, between the 1860s and World War I, and articles in the World’s Fair, a paper for showpeople, in the first fifty years of the twentieth century, as well as interviews with descendants of the marionette showpeople and close examinations of many of the surviving puppets. McCormick begins his study with an exploration of the Victorian marionette theatre in the context of other theatrical events of the day, with proprietors and puppeteers, and with the venues where they performed. He further examines the marionette’s position as an actor not quite human but imitating humans closely enough to be considered empathetic; the ways that physical attributes were created with wood, paint, and cloth; and the dramas and melodramas that the dolls performed. A discussion of the trick figures and specialized acts that each company possessed, as well as an exploration of the theatre’s staging, lighting, and costuming, follows in later chapters. McCormick concludes with a description of the last days of marionette theatre in the wake of changing audience expectations and the increasing popularity of moving pictures. This highly enjoyable and readable study, often illuminated by intriguing anecdotes such as that of the Armenian photographer who fell in love with and abducted the Holden company’s Cinderella marionette in 1881, will appeal to everyone fascinated by the magic of nineteenth-century theatre, many of whom will discover how much the marionette could contribute to that magic.
Theatre-Rites are regarded as pioneers in the field of object-led and site-specific performance, creating ground-breaking work for family audiences since 1995. This book marks the company’s 25th anniversary, offering the first in-depth exploration of artistic director Sue Buckmaster’s visionary practice, in which anything can be animated. This book draws on original research, including five years of in-depth interviews between its authors, images from Theatre-Rites’ archive and Buckmaster’s private collection, detailed observations from the company’s professional training workshops and personal reflections on past productions. A timely and compelling advocacy for the importance of high-quality experimental arts provision for young audiences is made, distilling learning from decades of the company’s professional activities to motivate and empower the next generation of object-led theatre-makers. Theatre-Rites: Animating Puppets, Objects and Sites is an invaluable resource for any puppeteer, actor, dancer, visual artist, poet or student interested in expanding their understanding of how to incorporate puppetry and/or symbolic objects as metaphors in their work.
Henryk Jurkowski's seminal 1988 text, Aspects of Puppet Theatre, was groundbreaking in its analysis of puppetry as a performing art. This new edition of a classic brings the original text back to life, including four additional essays and a new introduction, edited and translated by leading puppetry scholar Penny Francis. Henryk Jurkowski's seminal 1988 text, Aspects of Puppet Theatre, was groundbreaking in its analysis of puppetry as a performing art. This new edition of a classic brings the original text back to life, including four additional essays and a new introduction, edited and translated by leading puppetry scholar Penny Francis.
Linking actual instances of language use with structures of social power in francophone Belgium, Gross outlines the history and contemporary configuration of rod puppetry in Liège. The analysis of this working class performance art moves between what occurs on and off stage. As puppeteers speak in other voices, sometimes in Walloon and sometimes in French, they create a sociolinguistic model based on 19th century renditions of medieval texts, the voices of past puppeteers, and the language that surrounds them. The high level of linguistic reflexivity created by the regional language movement has led to frequent metalinguistic and metapragmatic commentaries within the puppet shows. This complex speech genre embedded in social context shows the influence of identity struggles: from local class oppositions to imperial designs abroad. Keeping a tight focus on language, Speaking in Other Voices examines the process of entextualization and recontextualization as stories of war and religion are transmitted to succeeding generations.
Women and Puppetry is the first publication dedicated to the study of women in the field of puppetry arts. It includes critical articles and personal accounts that interrogate specific historical moments, cultural contexts, and notions of "woman" on and off stage. Part I, "Critical Perspective," includes historical and contemporary analyses of women’s roles in society, gender anxiety revealed through the unmarked puppet body, and sexual expression within oppressive social contexts. Part II, "Local Contexts: Challenges and Transformations," investigates work of female practitioners within specific cultural contexts to illuminate how women are intervening in traditionally male spaces. Each chapter in Part II offers brief accounts of specific social histories, barriers, and gender biases that women have faced, and the opportunities afforded female creative leaders to appropriate, revive, and transform performance traditions. And in Part III, "Women Practitioners Speak," contemporary artists reflect on their experiences as female practitioners within the art of puppet theatre. Representing female writers and practitioners from across the globe, Women and Puppetry offers students and scholars a comprehensive interrogation of the challenges and opportunities that women face in this unique art form.
The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance offers a wide-ranging perspective on how scholars and artists are currently re-evaluating the theoretical, historical, and theatrical significance of performance that embraces the agency of inanimate objects. This book proposes a collaborative, responsive model for broader artistic engagement in and with the material world. Its 28 chapters aim to advance the study of the puppet not only as a theatrical object but also as a vibrant artistic and scholarly discipline. This Companion looks at puppetry and material performance from six perspectives: theoretical approaches to the puppet, perspectives from practitioners, revisiting history, negotiating tradition, material performances in contemporary theatre, and hybrid forms. Its wide range of topics, which span 15 countries over five continents, encompasses: • visual dramaturgy • theatrical juxtapositions of robots and humans • contemporary transformations of Indonesian wayang kulit • Japanese ritual body substitutes • recent European productions featuring toys, clay, and food. The book features newly commissioned essays by leading scholars such as Matthew Isaac Cohen, Kathy Foley, Jane Marie Law, Eleanor Margolies, Cody Poulton, and Jane Taylor. It also celebrates the vital link between puppetry as a discipline and as a creative practice with chapters by active practitioners, including Handspring Puppet Company’s Basil Jones, Redmoon’s Jim Lasko, and Bread and Puppet’s Peter Schumann. Fully illustrated with more than 60 images, this volume comprises the most expansive English-language collection of international puppetry scholarship to date.
