Puppets!

In February I went on the puppet making course with Emma Powell at Puppet Place. I was really excited to be going as I love to learn new things and have become really inspired by puppetry recently. The class was really well taught and facilitated and Puppet Place is a great place, I'd suggest following them online as they share a lot of inspiring stuff.

I went with Dewi, who I had made some puppetry pieces with for ¡hen~dø, which was great because it meant we were learning the same technique and we had the same goals for our puppets (that they would definitely be used in performance, but we were feeling playful and open to who they would become). The pictures here are of both our puppets made in class and an extra head each which we made at home.

​We began carving our a styrofoam head and using foil to add bulk where we needed it. The final layers are papier mache, which can be refined and even sanded for details.

The body is built up on a wire frame, which for me was the hardest part of the process. I'm used to either sculpting shapes from a solid block or using flat forms (a paper pattern for fabric) that are shaped when they are sewn together. The wire was somewhere between soft and hard and had a lot of spring. If I do it again I might find a solid block I can use to form the shapes around, though that would take away some of the organic development of the puppet, which I really enjoyed. I'm planning on making a stuffed fabric puppet since I have the sewing skills, but mainly as an experiment and to see what I can learn from doing so; the method we learnt here means they are nice and light and much more practical for performance. So, more practice forming with wire is probably required for me!

The taller, oval head is mine. We roughed out some sketches in the first week but as I hadn't planned any particular puppet in advance I was happy to let shapes and personality develop as I went along, rather than defer to the sketch too rigidly.

The thing I enjoyed most was learning how to make the joints and armature. I knew I could put something together without the course as I do a lot of making stuff, but I wanted to find out the techniques for the joints that would make it functional and lifelike. As I'd hoped, the techniques for the joints could be used in many different types of puppets. So if I make a stuffed fabric puppet i can still build them a similar way. I especially love the ball and socket joint for the hips. You can see at the back of the puppet that he is hollow and the head is operated from inside. ​

Here's my puppet after the course, at the point where all the wadding is attached to his frame and he has begun to take shape and be fleshed out. He's hanging out of the window to dry his hands.​

Painting the heads was a slightly daunting prospect as it could change the feel and personality of each puppet drastically. We also needed to have something in common between them, so that they appeared to be from the same species, if not the same family. We did some test paints on the smaller heads and also mucked about with different hair from coloured wool.

At this point we've done base coats on the main heads and below you can see some experiments with moustaches for Dewi's puppet! We've got a fair idea of who they are now and how they interact. We were very fortunate to be asked to cat-sit for three weeks (thank you Sean and Eva!) so we had lots of time and space to finish them off and start playing with making them live and breathe. We've got some nice ideas and a core of the piece now, but that's another post....