Puppet Kaos - where Kelvin Kao plays with puppets and tell random stories
Ah, procrastination. This time, I waited till the entire course was over to write about it.
Originally, I thought this would be the most useless class in the entire series, and boy, was I wrong!
I was thinking: in the Beginning class we would learn all the basics; in the Advanced class we would learn about actually rehearsing for a show. In the Intermediate class? I saw it just as a transition since you would just be doing basically the same thing you did in the Beginning class, except you would be sharing the stage with other people. Not too different. But wow, was I wrong. I actually learned a lot from this class. You know what made all the difference?
The nitpicking.
Yup, nitpicking. The best thing about this class was that the instructor, Christian, was really nitpicking in this class. Though he kept apologizing for doing it, I really thought the nitpicking was great. I mean, I paid for the class, so please call out all my mistakes and help me fix them!
How this class was different from the beginning class was that, instead of having all these different exercises and choreography taught to you, you would come up with your own choreography. And then you kept refining it and fixing all the mistakes along the way.
What he nitpicked on was really nothing we didn’t know. Nitpicking reminds me of nose-picking, so let’s use that as an example. We all know (I think) that you shouldn’t pick your nose in public. But some of us will still do it unconsciously. It’s not until someone points out to you, “Dude! Gross! Stop picking your nose!” that you can be aware of it. After this habit is corrected, even if you had a relapse sometime down the line, it’s also more likely that you will catch yourself when your finger is about to violate the restraining order.
It was pointed out to me that there was something a little odd about my lip-sync. It wasn’t very precise and was a little stiff. I tried different things in class and I worked on it at home in front of a mirror. I realized that I probably picked up some bad habits while practicing with a puppet with a thumb-hold that I’ve been procrastinating on fixing, so my hand ended up having to be stiff and stuck in a certain position to grab onto the mouth plate. So I loosened up my wrist and the lip-sync was much cleaner and more natural in the next class.
It was also pointed out to me that I needed to be more specific in the breathing and gestures. As a human, taking a breath, whether through the nose or mouth, is relatively silent for the most part. And then when you talk, you move your mouth and make sounds. The primary thing you do with the puppet’s mouth is, of course, talking or singing. But if you remember to also do a breathing motion before the words, it makes the puppet look so much more alive, even though the addition is really subtle. I still don’t remember to take those breaths every time (and you probably don’t need to if you just have a short sentence), but I am a lot more conscious of it now.
Compared to TV puppetry, where you have a monitor and you are watching your own performance at all times, it’s harder to correct these things in theatre. The puppet is right next to you, so you can’t really see it. You can either use the mirror (which is eventually take away) to correct yourself, or you have to rely on the instructor. This means you have to be a lot more aware of what you are doing, because you don’t have a monitor you can watch to realize that you are doing something wrong.
Another cool thing about this class was that we got to work on those glove-hand puppets (like Cookie Monster, Ernie, and Trekkie Monster). The puppet would take two people to operate. One person would be doing the head and left hand, while the other person got just the right hand. My partner all these four weeks was Andrew. We started out with him on the right hand, but we ended up switching back and forth. It was very interesting to see, because the character seemed to take on a slightly different personality depending on who was on the left and who was on the right, even though we were doing the exact same choreography.
At the end of the last class, we filmed what we were doing. We did one wide shot with all the characters, and we did one close-up for each character. When we watched the clips on TV, I thought, “wow, that actually looked really good!” Things really came together and that was definitely quite a rewarding experience.
Related posts:
Theatre Puppetry Workshop (Beginning): Weeks 1, 2
Theatre Puppetry Workshop (Beginning): Week 3
Theatre Puppetry Workshop (Beginning): Weeks 4, 5, 6
Yes, leave it to a procrastinator to write about the beginning class when the intermediate class is almost over.
We continued to worked on the specifics and doing improv. There were some fun games too. There was one where we had to pick a random (fictional) movie title out of a hat and have people guess what it was. And there was another one where we did impressions of one another and then had people guess who the person was impersonating. We ended up doing inside jokes for the most part, but that was fun. Apparently I’ve developed a reputation of showing up to class late because I stopped to grab something to eat. Hm, what do you know? 
Each week, we were also introduced to a different kind of puppetry. Week 4 was puppets with glove hands, like Cookie Monster, Ernie, or Trekkie Monster. One person controls the head/mouth and left hand, while another person controls the right hand. It was fun working with a partner. Little did I know that it would become my main focus in the intermediate class.
Since I was in this class, there was an extra type of puppetry that was introduced… by me. I did a little show-and-tell with some Taiwanese puppets in class. I brought several puppets and showed videos of a recent performance I went to (more on that later). Always glad to share the art form that made me fall in love with puppetry, and performance arts in general.
In Week 5, we played with a marionette. It was heavier than all the other puppets we’ve played with, since the puppet needed to have enough weight in different parts of the body to be balanced properly and have a good illusion of weight. I wish we spent more time on this. If there were a whole class on marionettes, I would be interested in taking it. Probably not this year though, unless I get really rich.
In Week 6, we played with black-light puppets. This kind of puppetry is performed in the dark. UV light is used to shine on puppets covered in fluorescent materials. The puppeteers are supposed to dress in all black, and the background is supposed to be all black too. And then you’ll just see puppets floating around. When that’s done properly, it’s very cool-looking. But of course, we didn’t really dress in all black. And we couldn’t block out all lights completely and the curtain was not black-black. So it didn’t really work well, but at least it kinda worked. That goes to show you that how important it is to prepare the venue properly when you do this kind of puppetry.
Overall, the course was a fun introduction of different types of puppetry. I think I would still recommend the TV puppetry class more. However, I am totally biased. Since I already took the TV puppetry class first, naturally I would not learn as much in this class. It’s simply the law of diminishing return. Also I am part of the Los Angeles Guild of Puppetry so I already have opportunities to be exposed to different kinds of puppetry. So perhaps it’s not entirely fair to judge which class is more valuable. I would say that it’s probably better to start with the TV class as the beginner, because you get to see your own performance on a monitor while you are doing it. You get immediately feedback for what you are working on. In theater puppetry, you have no monitor so eventually you’ll need to learn to trust your hand to do the right thing, even though there’s no visual feedback to verify it. So maybe it’s better to get the basic mechanics down in the TV class.
Related posts:
Theatre Puppetry Workshop (Beginning): Weeks 1, 2
Theatre Puppetry Workshop (Beginning): Week 3
After watching a very awesome Taiwanese puppet show in the morning (more on that in the next post after I go through the videos), I went to my theatre puppetry class in the afternoon. Yes, my Saturday was indeed full of puppets.
In this class, we worked on this short musical number some more. In the last two weeks we were only doing lip-sync, but this week we were playing the karaoke track. That meant we all had to sing (or find some other way to make it interesting if we couldn’t sing). We also did some other singing exercises in different voices. It was fun to hear everyone’s non-talking voice.
I also learned this little trick of following the notes on sheet music. This means when your puppet is singing a high note, its head will point upwards and when it’s singing a low note, the head will point down more. Of course, this rule is not something that’s set in stone, but it definitely helped making the performance more expressive.
And we learned another piece of choreography that’s focused on rod manipulation. Speaking of rods, we also got to play with some Wayang golek (Indonesian rod puppets). These has some pretty unique movements and it wasn’t something that I immediately got a hang of. And I had no idea that those heads just sit on the main rod, and it wasn’t really attached so you could remove it quite easily. Who knew?
We also played with a Bunraku-style puppet (the simplified kind, not the Japanese kind). We had been working with these Muppet/Avenue Q style puppets that has no legs, so people really jumped on the chance to play with a puppet that has legs. We made it dance. We made it run. We made it leap through hurdles. And once again, although it took three people to control one puppet, somehow we all worked pretty well together.
I really enjoyed the fact that we are covering a wide range of topics. But one of the things that I enjoyed the most was when the whole class let out an enthusiastic “Yayyyyyyyyy!” after every little performance. It made the whole environment very encouraging and welcoming. Perhaps we should all do this yay thing more often.
Related post:
Theatre Puppetry Workshop (Beginning): Weeks 1, 2
Once again, I am back to Puppet School to learn more about puppetry. So you will once again see a bunch of notes here like when I took the TV puppetry classes back in 2009.
The class is taught by Michael Earl, who worked on Sesame Street and various Muppet projects and Christian Anderson, who was on the original US tour of Avenue Q. As far as I know, we all took the TV puppetry classes from Michael so we all knew him already. As for Christian, after looking at the cast list for the tour he was on, I think I probably saw him perform when Avenue Q came to LA.
When I walked into the classroom, the first person I saw was Paddy, and we exchanged the “hey, good to see you again”. I said hi to Michael the teacher. And we went around introducing ourselves. I actually recognized many of these people from the It’s a Monster World show. And then Allison walked in, and I thought “cool, another person I know”. It’s getting to the point that I’ll usually run into someone I know at these things nowadays.
Like the TV puppetry class, we discussed and did some exercises about weight, gravity, breath, and eye focus. This is a review for, I think, all of us, but then the biggest difference is that we are no longer performing for a camera. This has very important implications.
First of all, the feedback is different. In TV, we are always looking at the monitor, so we know exactly what we are performing. In theater, we don’t get to watch ourselves perform. Sure, we can use a mirror. But that can only be used during practice and isn’t completely useful when we are not facing the front. And it’s totally useless if you are facing your audience instead of facing the wall, where the mirror is. (There is also an unintended use for the mirrors: since my posture isn’t always good, it serves as a good reminder to avoid slouching.)
Also, the space is different. In TV, the character is always in a rectangular frame. We lift the puppets over hour heads and keep our heads out of the shot. In theatre, we are doing it the Avenue Q style, where the puppet and the puppeteer are at the same eye level. The entire stage space is utilized, and the movements of the puppeteer and puppet shall be perfectly in sync.
This is actually one major challenge. I have performed on stage numerous time, and I have trained for TV puppetry where I just make sure the puppet looks right on camera while ignoring whatever that’s not in frame. I can do them separately, but I really haven’t done both at the same time. For TV puppetry, I am often only moving my arm, while the rest of my body stays relatively still – not for theatre puppetry though, where you want to have your whole body move in sync with the puppet. It takes some getting used to.
We also did some specifics exercises, story-telling and improv scenes.
We reviewed and practiced more of what was taught last week, but this week, we also got to play with shadow puppets! We had a dinosaur manipulated by two people and a butterfly controlled by another person. We took turns and had three people behind the screen at a time. We were just goofing around with it, but then Michael started narrating stories and we were acting it out and adding our own twists to it. It was a lot of fun.
I also found it interesting that we all had the instinct to work with one another to make the scene look good. Though none of the pairs manipulating the dinosaur talked about who should do what beforehand, it felt like the pair had been practicing together. They totally know who should lead and who should follow at a certain moment, and when they worked together flawlessly as one to bring a dinosaur to life, that was a beautiful thing to watch, and certainly amusing too.
The first two classes had been fun. We will be playing with other kinds of puppets as well in the next few weeks. Looking forward to it.
Every now and then, I would emails from people interested in learning about puppetry but don’t know where to start, so I thought it would be a good idea to organize some links into a post. This post will be about Muppet-types, since that’s what people usually ask about.
To start learning puppeteering, it will be helpful to have a puppet to practice with. You can either make one, or purchase one.
I built some puppets to use for practice based on the How to Make Puppets video series by Paul Louis Muller on eHow. I followed the method he covered in the videos for the most part, with a few modifications of my own. You can also find my own tutorials on this website for building a monster puppet with arm rods, a monster puppet with glove hands, and a sheep puppet. One thing I do want to point out that wasn’t really mentioned in the video was that rubber cement might be toxic (depending on what chemicals the manufacturer used) until dry, so you need have good ventilation and safety precautions in place. I prefer to just use hot glue, though it might not be as sturdy.
I’ve been making puppets just with fabric, cardboard, and poly-fil. If you are interested in building puppets out of foam, there are patterns out there that you can buy as well. Many people have purchased the Project Puppet patterns and build good looking puppets out of them. You can also purchase patterns from School of Puppetry. What’s good about this one is that there are videos demonstrating the puppet-building process, so you can follow along.
As for materials, I like getting them from Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores, because they carry a good selection of fabrics, which many craft stores don’t, and there is one in my area. I mostly just buy fabric there and get other random items (such as ping-pong balls, index cards, bamboo skewers) elsewhere.
I am not particularly familiar with this aspect, since I build my own puppets. But eBay and Etsy should be good places to look. I was planning to buy a monster puppet from puppet builder Stacey Gordon of Puppet Pie, but her house got flooded. I am going to wait for her to unpack her stuff but I do like her puppets and want to purchase one from her.
Also on eHow is this video series on puppet manipulation. You can learn the basics from watching the video and just from your own trial and error. I also like the exercises and video demonstrations on puppeteer / instructor Amy Harder’s Puppetry Lab website. It’s really no longer updated, but there are goodies in the archive. I particularly like the videos because Amy shows interesting techniques in her enthusiastic ways.
Of course, the best way to learn is still from classes where you interact with an instructor face-to-face. That’s something no amount of video-watching can really replicate. With classes, you will be able to see things from different angles, and you will have a instructor giving you tips as you practice. If you are in the Los Angeles area, I highly recommend Michael Earl’s TV Puppetry Workshop. You can also see my notes here to get an idea on what’s covered in class.
For those of you that’s starting to learn about this topic, I hope this is useful. Feel free to leave a comment or email me if there are other questions. 
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