Try your hand at puppetry!

Puppets are a really fun activity and can be made from a few easily accessible arts and crafts materials, or just with your hand! There are lots of different varieties of puppets which you could experiment with. Make one puppet and create a character and a voice, or make a whole cast of characters to put on your own puppet show. 

Sock and hand puppets

These are often the simplest type of puppets to create. Get creative with the materials you use and then practice performing with them.

Shadow puppets

Shadow puppets can also be very simple, but if you are more confident you can try making a jointed (articulated) puppet which gives much more variety for performance. If you don't have any craft materials at all then do a search on YouTube as to how to make hand shadow animals- then all you need is a blank wall and a desk lamp or torch! 

Try watching the story of The Three Brothers & the Deathly Hallows from Harry Potter to see how effective shadow puppetry can be in telling a story. It's beautiful! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN1_h_eGitE

Other types of puppetry

There are numerous other types of puppets that you could have a go at. Marionette (or string) puppets are generally the most difficult to make and to operate but there is one simple example here that you could have a go at, or try attaching thread or fishing line to the limbs and head of a teddy bear or soft toy?

Puppetry is used in theatre more and more, and the other examples and tutorials here are based more on how you can breathe life into a puppet on stage.

Try these YouTube links, playlists and channels:

• Blind Summit Theatre Company- three videos on focus, fixed point and breath. 

• A TED talk on creating the puppets for 'War Horse'