Getting Started with Puppets!

When I was a child, my idea of heaven was to be taken out to a "show." The first one I saw was such a revelation that I drew a picture of it on my blackboard to fix it in my mind forever. But no drawing could reveal the secret meaning of that experience. A show performed a miracle. For it set aside a time and place where actors and audience, young and old, could make believe together. After that, I could not imagine anything more exciting (in this world, or the next) than to be in the audience for a play, a concert, a circus, a vaudeville, or puppet show. Each variation on performance was joy compounded.
--George Latshaw

So, how does one get started with puppets? Well, like most things it's usually best to start at the beginning. Many how-to book on puppetry usually begins with creating a puppet and then coming up with a show. But here we'll use a method adapted from the Martin "Stevie" Stevens technique where one begins with the idea of a production, then advances on to creating the puppet(s) to suit the concept. It is our hope, that using this method will, as it did in the mid-1950s, change the way many novice or would be puppeteers work.

1. Start with a Dream

Like George Latshaw above, starting out in puppetry usually begins with a dream. What was it that inspired you to think about puppets? What was it that compelled you to visit this website? It is from this mental picture that your formation into puppetry will begin to take shape! So take a minute and think about that thought. Then, think about puppetry. Sit back quietly, make yourself comfortable and relaxed. Avoid thinking about any of the usual considerations of puppetry as you've seen it practiced, but just let your mind drift through the field. Picture the stage, the show, the lights, the audience. Then if possible draw a picture of what you see. Draw an image of yourself in that drawing. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate. Use stick figures if you have to. Just try to envision yourself in the picture. Where are you in the picture? Are you standing or sitting? Are you watching or performing. If you are watching what are you watching? If performing, what are you doing? Stop right now and pick up that pencil and draw!

Even a mental picture could work but pulling out a blank sheet of paper and a pencil and sketching it out will help your mental juices to begin to flow out from your subconscious into your mind, down through the pencil and out onto the paper. Start taking notes. These, at this time aren't going to be perfect but are merely the first steps toward materializing the delight you have envisioned - sort of "pinning the pleasure down, so to speak for our work in the future."

..if you picture a show that stirs you, that excites you, that makes you smile every time you think about it, you will automatically move toward all the multitude of details that must be encountered o the way to that mutual enjoyment.
--Martin Stevens

2. Put yourself in the picture

Now that you have a clear picture of what inspired you to begin thinking about puppets, ask yourself who is your audience? You can’t force an audience to appreciate Oedipus Rex if its taste is Sponge Bob. So it is important that you gauge your audience Go where they go, see what they see become experienced in what pleases them.—the kind of things they rave about as they leave, and for days after. if you are enthusiastic about it, your enthusiasm, your emotion, will generate attention-attention to everything that has to do with the realization of that picture. And as you turn your enthusiastic attention on this new show everything you need in the way of material or information will come into focus; people who can help you will begin to appear, and opportunities for showing the play will suddenly manifest themselves.

NEXT TIME: ’WRITING FOR THE PUPPET — Developing the script‘