Puppets: Handbook of Marionettes
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| Puppets: Handbook of Marionettes |
We of the Hamburg Puppet Guild, a group of people with art training, for some years have enjoyed working with puppets as a hobby. We have found them aid to child training in our professional work as teachers and homemakers. “How do you make them?” is the question we have been asked by a constantly widening circle of friends who have seen our products or have heard thru schools, libraries, or camps of our work.
This manual gives the answer to that question and suggests shortcuts that anyone can follow into the fascinating field of puppetry. Though we are now manufacturers and our dressed puppets and Puppet Paks are available in leading stores, our chief interest is in the educational field. Teachers and children desire to make their own puppets both for the fun of it and the value of the experience. Hence the publication of this manual.
Puppets are creative play. Introduce them into any group of either adults or children, and they create interest at once. Both boys and girls are as interested in puppets as in games and this interest is the foundation of the educational value of puppetry. Adults find an outlet for many a hobby in working puppets and find it an absorbing interest for an entire family. It is sustained interest. Anyone who sees a puppet being operated immediately wants to try to work the controls and put it thru its repertoire of lifelike movements.
Latent dramatic instincts in the individual are aroused. The person who is shy, as he works the puppet’s strings, finds an outlet for self-expression. By making the puppet act and talk he is in reality making himself do those things. In addition, all children want to make things. With a suggestion or two from the teacher or parent as to how to start, a group will busy itself instantly. And always there is an attractive picture of future accomplishment ahead; no matter how expert one becomes new development is always presenting itself.
Thus one finds an ideal background for lasting educational accomplishment. Puppetry can be a whole school project. Sewing classes will be especially interested in costume design and the making of the clothes; manual training classes in the stage carpentry, electric and scenic effects; art and drama classes can experiment in many different ways in the actual production. Consider the following points in which puppets offer superior training.
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