2nd puppet making session and thinking about the puppet theatre

The 2nd of Mervs puppetry workshops.

We looked at different ways of attaching the sticks.  We need something that will be quite strong yet allow a the puppet to be manipulated from a range of angles.

Large paper clips and masking tape were used to fit the sticks to the puppets.  These seemed to do the trick.

The paper clip could be bent so that it was coat hanger shaped, or oval shaped.  The coat hanger gave a firmer hold on the puppet, but the oval gave a wider range of manipulation angles.

Bonnie put lots of joints onto her robot, to see what would happen.  She tie a piece of string to both hands, and pulling the string at different angles moved all of the joints.

I used very simple one joint movements - a ladys arm, lifting a glass - tho it looked more like she was throwing it over her shoulders.

The other one was another way to have a puppet with opening mouth.  Rather than the flip top lid that I did the last time, this one opened by pulling a flap with a second stick.

these diagrams show the range of puppet movememts.

Finally I did a scene of ladies drinking tea.  This is a scene, rather than an actual puppet, though there could be elements that move, or moving objects could be placed on it.  My idea is that this could be done by painting onto tracing paper or a very opaque material.  I have joined all of the edges to make it look like a self contained scene, so that if we use the idea where we have different scenes on one cloth, each one will have its own frame.  Also this adds to the strangeness as I had to alter the shapes to make them join up with each other.