5 Day Puppetry Course

Five days to teach puppetry and puppet making to students from Den Rytmiske I Nordkraft Aalborg.

We began the week with a workshop in puppetry and animation, trying lots of different styles and exercises. This included animating paper into lots of different creatures, building two person puppets from scrap materials and an object manipulation cabaret. This helped the students discover the versatility of puppetry and its ability to break the rules of reality and gravity.

The next two days were spent researching, designing, sculpting, jointing and decorating their puppets. It was quite a challenge to take the ideas from inside the head, to a drawing on the page and then into 3D form.

But all the students got stuck in and the results were fantastic. Best of all was they really took on board the learning from the first day. They made puppets with clear sight lines, open characters and well functioning controls.

Day four (today) was spent exploring ways of devising and creating puppet choreography. They learnt techniques such as creating moments, sequences, pedestrian and poetic movement, as well as, improvisation and direction. All showed a great sensitivity and creativity when building their scenes and results were really entertaining.

The final day will be used for rehearsal, before sharing with an audience. It will be so exciting to see how the audience reacts and how the students will feel performing with their puppets. I hope they will be super proud because they should be.