Puppet Theater

Contemporary puppet theater approaches design and devising from a wholistic perspective. All objects onstage contribute to a total performing world. Characters, scenery, and even the stage itself may all be manipulated by hand to become animate, performing beings. Through the lens of puppetry, students are invited to consider how all theater might use visual design elements as active storytellers. Students are guided through the creation and performance of two puppet shows, each in a different style. The first project examines the possibilities of toy theater. Originally a nineteenth-century European tradition, it includes a focus on the design of the theater itself (in miniature) and historically all scenery and characters are flat. In contemporary toy theater, size and dimensionality vary, but a focus on performing scenery and stage effects is retained. The second project explores shadow puppetry. With ancient Asian roots, shadow puppetry exists across the world today in a multitude of forms. This course utilizes a tabletop light-screen set-up made from simple home materials or a more complicated arrangement of students' own designs. Projects are informed by examples of contemporary puppet theater as well as theories of art and visual perception, theater scenography, cinema, and comics. Classes are divided into varied length segments of discussion, puppet theater construction, play, and performance. The course explores devising theater with music, text, or image as core inspiration and alternative models of story structure. Projects investigate different modes of collaboration and varied approaches to the performing puppeteer.