Participants will learn 3 different types of springs and 4 ways to incorporate springs into their puppet mechs.

Learn innovative shadow puppetry and projection techniques as seen in Paradox Teatro's multimedia performance MIGRACIONES / MIGRATIONS. Create sand drawings and shadow puppets with light tables, cameras, and video projectors. Participants end with creating an original 1-minute scene. Techniques can be applied to a variety of performance styles, filmmaking, and animation.

In this workshop we will learn a simple foam mouth puppet - If you work with children, you might just need to learn how to make these, along with suggestions on performance opportunities for the kids! Step by step, you will take flat foam into three dimensions!

Come Hear a wondrous tale of hobbits, wizards, and giant puppets. The George Daily Youth Theatre and Uplifting Puppet Co. in Oskaloosa, Iowa put on an epic production of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit complete with giant backpack trolls, pinching spiders, and a dragon puppet that was truly epic.

I've created 3 well-received shows based on family and career experiences, developing writing and presentation techniques which make the shows entertaining to a general audience, not just those whose memories match mine. I will demonstrate with a short piece, then discuss technique and invite discussion. In a second (optional) session, participants begin developing their own piece.

Successful design helps tell the Story, visually translating information as straightforward as a character's occupation or as symbolic as the bigger themes of the play. We'll explore an approach to designing characters that blends two critical steps, successfully moving a story from page to the stage.

This workshop will follow the development process from research to stage for Songs of the Scarlet & Wayback, an archives-inspired local history piece devised with students at Grinnell College, featuring shadow puppets and other shadow and paper arts interacting with live human performers. 

In this workshop, we will explore your puppetry business from a sales and marketing perspective. We will start by defining who you are and the products or services you offer. Then, we will cover how to price your products and services, providing you with the tools you need to effectively market and sell your business. 

Building thoughtful elements of sound and music can elevate puppetry, creating dramatic emphasis and deeper connection with your audience. Use sonic cues and effects to craft specific emotional reactions, strengthen storytelling, and tap into the powerful human experience of listening. Also, play and be silly! No musical experience required. 

Using an oversized paper bag as your base, you can create any character, animal, artwork, or? Participants will create a mask/costume from an oversized paper bag, decorative paper and recycled materials. 

Join Genna Beth Davidson as she shares the ins and out of working with care providers in children’s hospitals to use puppetry as a tool for healing and communication. In this workshop I’ll share how I got started in Dr. Joanne Vizzini’s Applied Puppetry Certificate course for non-clinicians. My experience moving away from performance with puppets and into using the puppet as a tool or medium of healing and listening. I’ll also share how I worked with Children’s National Hospital to create a program called Hello Dr. Bear for a Research event, and how I’m not engaged with Children’s Hospital of Richmond doing bedside puppetry and exploring further uses of puppets as a healing and helping modality in health care.

Like his new book, Kurt Hunter’s Simple Little Book of Marionettes, this workshop is based on more than three decades of experience assisting puppeteers with their first marionettes.  The workshop will focus on the topics most frequently misunderstood and the most common mistakes made by beginners with marionettes. 

In the workshop for integrating puppetry work/role play into your daily curriculum, classroom teachers of all elementary school ages will explore opportunities in their curriculum to review or work with puppets. Terry will demonstrate how he infuses his math lessons with puppetry for creating or working with partner pairs for addition/subtraction up to 10, then totals up to 20, as well as how he modifies the lesson content for much later in the school year to include double digit addition. In the second part of the workshop, Terry will show how he furthers student interest and engagement with what he calls Tap Dance Math, using his Math & Science puppet, Mr. Mercury and his decades of dance experience. Tap Dance Math is recommended as a mid-unit to end-of-unit informal assessment tool, while also checking exposure-level understanding to mastery-level understanding of the math concepts being taught. 

The George Daily Youth Theatre is the Auditorium’s own professionally-staffed Theatre Education program. Our year-round Youth Theatre offers after-school camps, an Elementary School Play, and eight weeks of K-12 summer camp. Their program builds strong characters onstage and off. High-energy theatre games and activities build relationships and excellent performance skills. Campers practice collaboration, communication, critical thinking, creativity, confidence, and citizenship. Thinkers, Makers, Performers, and Leaders — this is where your journey begins!