The Craft

Bringing Puppets to Life

Puppetry, “the process of animating inanimate performing objects to tell a story,” has been in use since at least the time of Ancient Greece and maybe much longer.¹ There is even some speculation that, in theatre, puppets preceded actors. ²

In Billy Goats Gruff & Other Tales, the puppets were created using, among other items, soft-sculpture fabric bodies and cheesecloth-mâché heads. Kate Church is the Character Designer for Mermaid Theatre of Nova Scotia, and she endeavors for her puppets take on a life all their own. ³

Speaking about her creative process, Church says,

“The intention of the work is to carry a silent imprint or sense of emotion through the posture and expression of the figure evolving in front of me. Built using a process that is movable throughout its construction, a tangible sense of emerging comes naturally to the finished sculpture: movement is part of the design.” ⁴

The puppets used in Billy Goats Gruff & Other Tales are similar to the puppets used in Japanese Bunraku (boon-rah-koo) puppetry--they are animated by puppeteers who are on-stage and visible to the audience.

Ancient Greek terracotta puppet dolls

Two Bunraku puppeteers working with a single puppet

Of course, Bunraku is just one form of puppetry, and there are many types of puppets:

Finger Puppet: Made to fit over a single finger, it usually has no moving parts.
Hand Puppet: Fitting over a puppeteer’s hand--and sometimes his/her arm--the puppeteer’s hand movements can, depending upon the design of the puppet, move the puppet’s eyes and mouth.
Marionette: This type of puppet is controlled by strings that also make it stand upright.
Marotte: A simple design, it consists of a head (and sometimes a body) mounted to a stick.
Object Puppet: A puppet made from everyday objects.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppetry#cite_note-4² https://www.britannica.com/art/puppetry³ https://efa-rep.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/BGG-Study-Guide.pdf⁴ https://katechurch.blog/about/

Creating Theatre For Children

Children’s theatre, that is, theatre created especially for children, began to be widely recognized as its own branch of theatre in the early 1900s. An early example of this appeared in 1903, when Alice Minnie Herts founded the Children’s Educational Theatre, the first theatre company in America to produce works exclusively for young people.

Alice Minnie Herts

On the other side of the world, in what is now Russia, Natalia Satz (who would go on to become the world’s first female opera director) founded the Moscow Theatre for Children in 1918. And while Herts’ theatre is no more, Satz’s continues today and is now known as, “The Natalya Sats Musical Theater.” ¹

Natalia Satz

In creating theatre for children, there are certain widely agreed upon conventions (but not absolutes), including, among others, a main character with a youthful perspective, over-the-top acting, and an awareness by creators of theatre’s potential to not only entertain but also educate. ²

“The children’s theatre is the only teacher of morals and conduct and high ideals that never bores the pupil, but always leaves him sorry when the lesson is over.”

-- Mark Twain

As much of the education offered in children’s theatre focuses on concepts like friendship, humanity, morals, etc., another decision facing the creators of children’s theatre is tone: What, if any, emotions should the audience of such a work be free from experiencing? While some might argue that emotions like sadness ought to be avoided, playwrights who work in children’s theatre, like Finegan Kruckemeyer, disagree. In his essay, The Taboo of Sadness, Kruckemeyer states,

“So often it is the sad event that cries for its victim to step up, to respond, to fight. Or more passively to consider, to reflect, to self-assess. That is surely a cause for taboo, in our notions of children and their acquisition of knowledge – to take the idea that child protagonists will attain knowledge not by being taught it, but rather by deducing it themselves. The shock to our adult sensibility is not so much the presence of children in this fearful situation – rather, it is the absence of adults.” ³

While theatre for adults is often also performed by adults, children’s theatre is not commonly performed by children, and this is another consideration that must be made when devising a children’s piece.

Hare and Tortoise features an adult cast, and, according to David Wood OBE, that approach of casting adults who have had an opportunity for more experience and learning makes sense:

“Participation by children is hugely beneficial and worthwhile, but I like to feel my plays might provide the inspiration to encourage them to want to do it themselves. I believe that children respond to exciting examples that inspire them. I also believe that children are more likely to, say, want to learn to play a musical instrument if they see and hear the best professional musicians playing in a concert. They are more likely to want to excel at football if they see – live or on television – the best professional teams displaying dazzling skills.”

Another unique aspect of children’s theatre that its creators are often faced with is the newness of the theatre experience to many of its audience members. According to Wood, this can often equate to a special kind of pressure felt by members of a production:

“I always worry that I haven’t the right to fail! The last thing I want to do is write something that might put children off theatre for life. I’m aware that many in the audience will be first-time theatre-goers, some of whom never asked to come! It’s so important to get it right, to enthuse them so much they can’t wait to return.” ⁴

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_for_Young_Audiences#cite_note-:3-2²https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330855424_Children's_Theatre_A_Brief_Pedagogical_Approach³ https://finegankruckemeyer.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/TheTabooOfSadness.pdf⁴ https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/advice/writing-for-childrens-theatre

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