Today, I’m sharing a couple of tips from my course on beginning and advanced puppetry. They deal with puppet positioning when up on stage.
“One of the things you need to be careful about is the dreaded “quicksand” patches that seem to infiltrate almost every theater. In the movies, when someone steps into quicksand, they slowly begin to sink out of sight. In puppetry, if you don’t pay attention to your puppet, the same type of effect often occurs. As your arm tires, you slowly begin to lower the puppet until just the top of its head is showing. The normal response when someone realizes his or her puppet has dropped is to quickly pop it back up in place. The problem is that the action causes the audience to turn their attention to that puppet and they may miss some important lines. If you find yourself in that position, slowly raise it back up again. But the ideal is to keep an eye on your puppet so that it doesn’t sink.
Another thing to guard against is leaning the puppet on the stage. This usually occurs when the arm is tired or you aren’t paying attention to the puppet. The puppet should be held about three to four inches away from the stage. This helps give a proper appearance and gives room for arm motions and body movement.
When two or more puppets are onstage talking with each other, it is important that they maintain eye contact with each other. Don’t look at the audience while talking with another puppet—look at that puppet. You can glance at the audience now and then, but keep your focus on the puppet doing the talking. When you do look at the audience, remember that they are lower than the puppet, so bend your wrist some so your puppet is looking down.”
Posted on January 14th, 2008 by PuppetTim
Filed under: Basic Puppetry, General Puppet | No Comments »
My wife and I head up the children’s church program at our church which gives us opportunity to continue working puppets. I also teach the fourth and fifth grade Sunday School class each Sunday and have decided to try something new, but first some background…
I’ve directed several puppet teams over the years, but most of them have involved teenagers or adults. The only exception was when our boys were young and became part of our team. We were ministering at a church when the boys were about ten years old. Our custom was to have them sit on the front pew while my wife and I did the puppets. As we were working our puppets in one of the recorded plays, we could hear the two of them repeating the lines word for word. One took one of the characters and the other took the second and went through the whole play. They had heard the plays so many times; they had most of them memorized.
We decided that if they knew the plays that well, it was time to see if they could join the team. We asked them if they wanted to start working puppets to which they gave an enthusiastic “Yes.” With a little bit of training, they were on their way and served on our traveling team for the next five years. Today, as young adults, they still have an interest in puppet ministry. In fact, one of them is the one who has drawn all the clipart for the website and puppet courses.
As I wrote in the first paragraph, I currently teach a fourth and fifth grade Sunday School class and the children are about the same age as my sons were when they started working puppets. The question that came to my mind was this; “Can I teach these children how to work puppets as a team?”
My sons had an advantage since they had seen us work puppets all their lives. The children in our class have only seen us work puppets occasionally in Junior Church. So, I presented the possibility of teaching them puppets with the goal of having them help us in Junior Church. They were excited about it and want to begin right away.
I’m going to go for it and will give occasional updates here to let you know how it goes. With the updates, I’ll try to pass on new things I’m learning as well.
Posted on January 9th, 2008 by PuppetTim
Filed under: General Puppet, puppet team | No Comments »
One of the joys of ministry for me over the years has been the privilege of being involved with Child Evangelism Fellowship here in New York. For the past twelve years or so, I’ve helped with the curriculum and training for CEF’s summer missionaries. These are young people who learn how to conduct back yard Bible clubs to reach children.
Part of my help has been to teach about puppetry and write plays for the clubs that go along with the lesson series. Each summer I provide four or five plays for the young people to use centered on various aspects of the club. One play helps the children learn the memory verse for the day, usually by having them teach it to a puppet. Another one we use as an introduction to the Bible lesson to help capture the children’s attention and prepare them for the lesson to follow. One play usually centers on the three basic rules in the club. We use puppets to help the children understand why we need rules in club and what those rules are. The other ones vary from year-to-year and can relate to a specific song, a review game, or other teaching during the club time.
The lesson series for this coming summer is, Jesus; My Savior and Friend. If you plan on using the series sometime in the near future (in Sunday School, Junior Church, your mid-week service or will use it this summer) and would like a copy of the scripts, let me know via email or a post on this blog. If you give me your email address, I’ll email a copy in MS Word and PDF format free of charge.
Posted on January 7th, 2008 by PuppetTim
Filed under: General, General Puppet, puppet team | No Comments »
One of the goals of this blog and our website www.ExperiencePuppets.com is to provide online helps to the puppetry community. Our emphasis is on puppet ministry and using puppets to teach about the importance of building character into your life. The tips and helps will work for those interested or involved in sacred or secular puppetry. The helps will include tips and tricks, articles on various puppet related topics, puppet scripts, and answers to questions about puppetry.
I haven’t written a lot of scripts, but have a plan in place to write at least one per month and posting it for free on the website or this blog. I’ll offer the plays in two formats. The first will have a Christian emphasis for use in Churches, Sunday Schools, Children’s Church, etc. The second format will be the same basic play offered with an emphasis on character building that can be used in a school, after school program, youth center, etc.
I haven’t set the specific topics or themes yet and would like to provide plays that will benefit you. So, if you have any specific themes or topics that you would like developed into a puppet play, let me know and I’ll consider it.
Posted on January 3rd, 2008 by PuppetTim
Filed under: Advanced Puppetry, Basic Puppetry, General Puppet, Object Lessons, Teaching Tips, puppet team | No Comments »