We love puppets for kids for all sorts of reasons. Puppet-making and performances exist in all cultures and all ages. Puppets can be improvised from the simplest, cheapest materials and yet fire the imagination of both the puppeteer and and audience. Yet while puppetry for kids can be simple and easy, puppets can also yield highly convincing professional performances as The National Theatre’s War Horse has shown.
Handspring Puppet Company: The genius puppetry behind War Horse
We were delighted to come across Clive Hick-Jenkins’ blog and the announcement of the Artlog Puppet Exhibition’s 2014 challenge on the post of Folktales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends – which should be enough to fire the imagination of kids and adults everywhere.
To help would-be participants Clive Hicks-Jenkins has begin a series of posts looking at the basic types of puppets which could be used in the challenge.
A guide to puppetry 1: the glove-puppet | Clive Hicks-Jenkins’ Artlog
What we love most about puppets for kids is how the simplest of materials can be adapted and used to make a sophisticated and compelling performance, as Gary Friedman demonstrates in a World of Puppetry workshop using nothing but crumpled paper!
World of Paper Puppetry Demonstration