Puppetry Making Workshops

The workshops are for all ages and all abilities. (2 hours per workshop).

Puppet workshops involve children or adults learning the first rules of object manipulation starting with basic items like paper to random objects like toasters and toothbrushes. Then before moving on to puppetry we look at our own bodies in some movement workshops.

“The puppeteer must be fully aware of how the human form works and moves before trying to bring a puppet or an object to life”

The participants get a chance to play with my own puppets, that range from table-top puppets to full body puppets and also hand and rod puppets. They then begin to design the puppet that they will eventually make. I work in foam, latex, and felt. The puppets can be as basic or as complicated as the individual requires. We look at how to build and make the head, mouth, arms, body, and if required the legs. We then look at voices and character work for the puppet, learning about taking elements of our own personality into the finished puppets.

The puppet workshops have proved a great success in breaking down barriers between people form very different backgrounds. This is the power of the puppet, that they can say and do anything, and they can be from anywhere, any time, any place, their movements have no limits. And this aspect is what has proven so well with people with disabilities, like people who use wheelchairs and people who are confined to a bed, people who are confined to an office desk, and people who are stuck in class rooms all day… the puppet has no confinements, no restrictions.

The gallery shows puppeteers from the Newry Gateway Club with their finished puppets that they made during a 2 month long puppet making workshop. They all made and created the heads themselves. The foam proved a great success with them as it allowed them to exercise their hand muscles by ripping and pulling at the foam to create the shapes of their very individual puppets heads. The bodies I used a simple blackcloth with a hole for 2 hands, this way 2 puppeteers could manipulate the one puppet. This works with one operating the head and a hand and the other puppeteer working the other hand. I have tried to develop this technique of more than one person operating a puppet within a workshop structure, as it calls for each individual to work and think like one person. This is great for team building and commands great respect and concentration from each puppeteer involved in the manipulation. And the end results of watching on epuppet come to life through 3 people is magical, and an experience someone can carry with them for a very long time.