Puppets And Puppetry

Children's theater, shadow puppets, rod puppets, special effects, hand puppets, marionettes, animal string puppets, trick marionettes, costume, puppet theaters, production, suppliers of materials.

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.

Provides instructions for making a variety of puppets, including where to find materials and how to get started.

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.

Expert guide explains how to construct several types of puppets and presents exercises for developing distinctive voices, learning puppet movement. Includes stage design, writing plays, directing productions, more. Over 150 black-and-white illustrations.

Introduces the history of puppetry and gives instructions for making various types of puppets, creating stage sets, and producing plays.

The puppet creates delight and fear. It may evoke the innocent play of childhood, or become a tool of ritual magic, able to negotiate with ghosts and gods. Puppets can be creepy things, secretive, inanimate while also full of spirit, alive with gesture and voice. In this eloquent book, Kenneth Gross contemplates the fascination of these unsettling objects—objects that are also actors and images of life. The poetry of the puppet is central here, whether in its blunt grotesquery or symbolic simplicity, and always in its talent for metamorphosis. On a meditative journey to seek the idiosyncratic shapes of puppets on stage, Gross looks at the anarchic Punch and Judy show, the sacred shadow theater of Bali, and experimental theaters in Europe and the United States, where puppets enact everything from Baroque opera and Shakespearean tragedy to Beckettian farce. Throughout, he interweaves accounts of the myriad faces of the puppet in literature—Collodi’s cruel, wooden Pinocchio, puppetlike characters in Kafka and Dickens, Rilke’s puppet-angels, the dark puppeteering of Philip Roth’s Micky Sabbath—as well as in the work of artists Joseph Cornell and Paul Klee. The puppet emerges here as a hungry creature, seducer and destroyer, demon and clown. It is a test of our experience of things, of the human and inhuman. A book about reseeing what we know, or what we think we know, Puppet evokes the startling power of puppets as mirrors of the uncanny in life and art.

Puppets have existed in one form or another in almost every culture throughout the history of man. In Puppetry: A World History, Eileen Blumenthal provides a comprehensive overview of the history and technique of puppetry and examines in depth and detail the unique nature and abilities of puppets and the countless roles they have played in human societies across the globe for thousands of years. Blumenthal draws examples from an astonishing array of puppeteers and performances, as well as works of art and historical artifacts to provide readers with a comprehensive view of the world of constructed actors and the eclectic, and often eccentric, artists who created them. From bunraku to Miss Piggy, from the shadow puppets of Java to Howdy Doody, from African marionettes with outsize genitalia to sweet and loveable Lamb Chop, from Senor Wences's famous hand (literally) puppet to the minimalism of Russian puppet master Sergei Obraztsov.

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.

Dressing the Naked Hand is for anyone interested in the art of puppetry. Teachers, amateurs, and even professionals will find new ideas and inspiration in the designs created by this trio of puppet enthusiasts. Includes trade secrets, tips, and how-to’s on puppetry unlike anything that has been published before. Puppets aren't just for looking at; they are for doing, and as we found out, they have a mind of their own. This one-of-a-kind how-to is not only an invaluable resource for the puppet artist, but a joy to read. From tongue-in-cheek humor to outright laugh-out-loud hijinks, this book teaches and tells the real story—from a puppet’s point of view. And, while the full-color and detailed how-to and finished puppet illustrations give you most of what you need, if you choose to read the text, well . . . it’s worth your time.