Start by thinking about what your puppet needs to accomplish
By Adeline O’Neal
“Puppetry is a coming together of art and science,” says Amanda Petefish-Schrag, an Associate Professor of Theater at Iowa State University who was “born into” puppetry. Growing up, Petefish-Schrag’s parents were puppeteers with a workshop in their basement where they would enlist her help with constructing puppets. She says she has come to appreciate and even love the art form, as well as the way it was passed down to her through her family.
Before you start the process of creating a puppet you have to determine the type of puppet you would like to make, “whether that be shadow puppets, or rod puppets, or hand puppets.” You must also establish what the purpose of your puppet is going to be. It could be a certain emotion or idea that you want to express with the puppet. After this you can think about the logistics of it: the size, shape, and relation to the audience.
When you have decided what the purpose of your puppet is going to be and what you want it to look like, you can start together the materials you would like to use. “I’m really inspired by materials, and what materials mean,” says Petefish-Schrag. The story of the puppet is not only the story you want it to tell, but also of the materials you use to make it with. Petefish-Schrag often uses trash as material for her puppets because of what it says about who we are, and the story that it tells independent of the character she makes with it.
Puppetry can be more of an exact science than you may think. “Physics doesn’t care about your aesthetic,” Matthew Laird, a puppeteer Petefish-Schrag admires, says. When you are setting out to make a puppet, you mustn’t think that the first version is the final version. You should allow yourself time to make multiple prototypes to insure that the mechanics work as best they can. “Puppetry is always a coming together of at least two different machines. No matter how simple your puppet is, it is always interacting with the human machine,” says Petefish-Schrag. This can sometimes complicate how successfully the puppet maneuvers, and subsequently, the message it gives to the audience. But as Petefish-Schrag says, “sometimes those moments that are really really frustrating, are also really exciting because the solutions people come up with are better than maybe what could have been done originally.” In her experience, puppeteers are collaborative problem solvers, showing one way this art form brings communities together.