Lesson video

Hello, my name's Mrs. Alton.

I'm really happy that you could be here today to share my lesson, The curious art of puppetry, and this is from the unit all about craft.

So let's get started.

By the end of today's lesson, I hope that you can create an imaginative puppet that uses shape and pattern to tell a story.

Let's look at some key words for today's lesson.

Puppet is a handmade figure, human, animal, or abstract form that is controlled by a person.

Geometric are regular mathematical shapes, like circles, squares, and triangles, with clear, defined edges.

Organic can refer to free-flowing, irregular, and natural curves.

Our lesson today is broken down into three parts.

The first part is Identifying types of puppet.

The second is Designing an imaginative puppet, and the third is Decorating puppets.

So let's look at Section 1: Identifying types of puppets.

Take a look at this image.

This is an example of a marionette.

Would you consider these puppets art, craft, or design? Think back to our previous learning on what a craft object is.

So a craft object is handmade.

Do you think that these puppets have been handmade? Maybe think about why.

A puppet is a crafted object designed to be animated and often used to tell stories or express ideas.

Puppets can be considered art, craft, or design, depending on their purpose and context.

So think about what the puppet might be for.

Is it a toy, or is it for a performance or play? And that can really help us to think about the context in which it's made.

These students are discussing whether they've seen puppets or maybe some they might own themselves.

Aisha says, "I've seen giant puppets at street festivals moved with rods!" Alex comments, "I have a hand puppet," and Laura says, "I've seen a show where puppets were controlled with strings." She's even made a shadow puppet before.

Maybe you can describe a puppet you've seen before or maybe even one that you may have made in the past.

The word puppetry has two stems. Puppet is the actual puppet itself, so it can be a figure, an animal, a human, or an object representing a character, and the word puppetry means the action, the movement, the performance.

Puppetry is a job in the creative industries that brings puppets to life to tell stories, express emotion, or convey ideas.

There are many different types of puppet.

The design and features of puppets are often specific to different cultures.

Let's look at the common elements of puppets.

They're made to tell a story by representing characters and ideas.

They can express emotions and actions, and we'll think about some of those emotions in a moment.

They can be made from a variety of materials.

Again, we'll be looking at materials in this section of the lesson.

The designs are often specific to different cultures, so we'll be thinking about how the puppets vary from culture to culture and maybe why that is as well.

And they can be 2D, so if you think of flat puppets, or 3D objects, and they can come in a variety of different sizes.

Hand-operated Taiwanese glove puppets are made from fabric and wood with clay or resin faces, and they have beautifully decorated, elaborate outfits as well, very colourful.

They tell traditional Taiwanese stories from mythology or folklore, so they might involve adventurous stories of heroes and heroines.

Laura says, "Their faces look very realistic with fine painted detail." And if we look at the materials that they're made from, the faces are made from clay or resin, which allows this fine detail to be created.

And they're also hand puppets, so we're thinking about these on a smaller scale.

They can be larger in some shows, but generally, they're quite small.

What does Laura notice about the Taiwanese glove puppets? Is it a, They are operated by strings, b, They have realistic, painted faces, or c, They have flat, 2D faces? Have a think.

Well done if you remembered.

It's B, They have realistic, painted faces.

Marionette puppets are puppets operated by strings from above.

So if you can imagine, you might have a control at the top, and you can manipulate and create this movement with the hands and the legs.

Marionette puppets are made all around the world and have different characteristics specific to the culture that they come from.

One artist you may wanna look at is Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and she was a Swiss artist.

She designed marionette puppets for Italian theatre, and she was a bit different from what had come before because she was really interested in this idea of abstraction, so taking things back really to their base.

She wasn't interested in making realistic puppets.

She wanted to go back to this idea of mathematical shapes, this geometry, and really create clear, precise lines in her puppets.

So quite the opposite to the Taiwanese style we've just looked at.

Over to you for a check for understanding.

Which of the following are ways to control a puppet? Is it a, through using rods, b, through using strings, or c, through using your fingers? Have a think Well done.

If you notice, actually, all three are ways to control a puppet, Javanese Wayang Kulit Shadow puppets are carved and painted 2D leather puppets.

So we're thinking about the materials again here.

They tell Hindu epic stories, entertaining and teaching moral lessons.

So these lessons might be what it is to be human with all the tragedy and successes of life.

They also use really exaggerated shapes to express the characters in the stories, and these puppets would be used with a shining light behind to project the silhouette onto a screen.

How do you think these angular or sometimes, they're very organic as well, exaggerated body shapes could change the feel of a puppet? Why do you think puppets are operated in different ways, and how do you think this might change the storytelling of the character? So, again, we are thinking of those characteristics and how they come across to the audience.

So think about how this might depend on maybe even the size or scale of the puppet as well.

Aisha says, "I think puppets are operated in different ways to match the story, the character, or the cultural tradition." And Lucas says, "Hand puppets are expressive.

String puppets move smoothly," so we're thinking about the controls from above here, and "Shadow puppets," like we've just been discussing with the Wayang Kulit, "create these dramatic silhouettes." Some puppets are small and can be controlled using fingers or hands, so you may even had finger puppets when you were small.

However, puppets can be any size and scale, and this can really affect the visual impact.

Some puppets are actually so large that they're controlled with many people inside or even a crane.

So you can imagine if you were at a street festival, and you saw this huge puppet, maybe what impact that would have on you as a viewer.

And they're not only for children's entertainment.

Puppets, as we've seen from the Wayang Kulit, can be used to teach as well.

They can be used to address social and political issues, and they're a really important part of that cultural history and tradition.

Giant puppets might include a puppet such as Little Amal.

This puppet travelled across many, many countries, and it drew a huge crowd to wherever it went.

It was operated by three puppeteers.

The puppet itself actually looked like a young refugee girl, and this was really to make people connect with stories and struggles that refugees face on a daily basis.

The puppet would be able to manoeuvre itself through the crowds and wave at the crowds and interact on a personal level and really brought home that this was a human story.

There was a person inside operating all of the movements as well.

These pupils are discussing the impact of using a large-scale puppet.

Alex says, "The puppet's large-scale makes people stop and think about the story because it's unusual, and it's powerful." And Aisha says, "Touching a large scale puppet is a way for people to feel direct connection to that puppet and the story that it's telling." How do you think the scale of a puppet affects its impact? Maybe you've got experience of seeing one at the theatre or a street festival.

Maybe that's something you could discuss with the person next to you.

Let's have a true or false question.

The design of a puppet affects how the audience interacts.

Is that true, or is that false? Well done if you said true.

A large-scale puppet can affect the way the audience interacts because it encourages that idea of participation and connection.

Each puppet serves a unique cultural purpose, as we've said, and that can be in telling important stories that connect beyond words, so why puppets are different from just reading a book.

They create magic through their movement and expressions.

There's lots of types of puppetry.

Here are just a few more.

You may have seen Uzbek hand puppets or maybe Mexican Marotte string puppets.

There's rod-operated Indian Yampuri puppets, Turkish Karagoz shadow puppets, so a different type of shadow puppetry, Brazilian Boneco giant puppets, and Mali Bamana giant body puppets.

So puppets that come in all different shapes and sizes.

Now it's over to you for a task.

You're going to choose a puppet to investigate, maybe one of the ones we haven't talked about today, and answer the following questions.

What is the puppet's form? So is it human, animal, or abstract? How does it move? So again, thinking about those methods of movement.

Is it string? Is it rod? Is it hand-operated? And is it flat 2D or a 3D object? What materials are used? So the materials can have a lot to do with the type of puppet that the puppeteer wanted to create.

So maybe think about how those materials are manipulated to create that outcome.

So like with the resin faces of the Taiwanese puppets, faces need to be really realistic, so the materials had a big impact on that.

What shapes are used? Thinking about our keywords here, geometric being those very mathematical shapes, and organic being those very free-flowing lines.

Maybe there's a combination of both, depending on what types of puppets you're looking at.

Does your puppet tell a story or communicate a message? So thinking about the characteristics of the puppet and how that might impact the story it was made to tell.

So have a good look at your puppets, go through the questions, and I look forward to hearing what you've got to say.

How did you find that? I hope you had fun discussing the qualities of the puppets that you found, Alex says about the Uzbek puppets he looked at that they "are realistic with 3D painted wooden heads." And, "They are made with geometric," that keyword again, "patterned clothes." Aisha comments on the Uzbek puppets that, "They are hand-operated, and they're usually human, but they're sometimes animals as well, like birds or sheep.

Their performances tell moral and funny towels from Uzbek folklore." Let's take a look at our second part of the lesson, Designing an imaginative puppet.

A stereotype is an oversimplified or unfair belief about a group of people.

Sometimes puppets can be designed to reinforce, which means they can support these often quite harmful views of stereotypes and may use exaggerated features to communicate a stereotype as well.

Features such as glasses for a wise character or large round eyes for a child character are examples of these stereotypes, and I'm sure you could think of a lot more.

These features simplify real people, often putting them into groups or these categories, and can reinforce these false ideas that we can sometimes take for granted about people.

Take a look at this image here.

Maybe you can recognise what show this comes from.

Maybe you've even seen this similar type of puppet before.

They can sometimes be designed to show these negative stereotypes.

So in traditional British Punch and Judy shows, the men are often shown as overly aggressive, and they often will have big noses as well.

You can probably tell that from this image here.

And the women can often be, as well, very passive, so very quiet, or overly dramatic.

And these stereotypes can reinforce negative views of gender.

So why are stereotypes often unhelpful? Is it a, because they can reinforce negative views of gender, b, because they can help everyone to understand each other better, or c, because they celebrate difference? Well done if you said a, because they reinforce negative views of gender.

Chila Kumari Burman created a life-size artwork called "Singing the Blues," and this artwork looks very similar to the Wayang Kulit style of shadow puppetry.

The puppet has multiple arms and legs to show that no one is just one thing.

Everyone has many sides to their identity, and it also resembles the shape of the Hindu God Shiva, who has many arms to perform many different actions at once.

These pupils have made puppets and discussing how the shape of a puppet can show aspects of the puppet's character.

So have a look at this puppet here and maybe it's body position and what it's doing.

Sam comments that, "Body shapes and positions, like being upright and kicking, might symbolise joy." Well, maybe even a whole range of emotions or actions.

Take a look at this one here.

Maybe notice how many legs it might have or arms or the position of its head.

Do you think it reminds you of an animal or a human or maybe even a combination of the two? Aisha says, "The body position of her puppet can show a lot about how someone's feeling." She likes the effect of mixing up the shapes and the sizes of limbs.

So an imaginary puppet, they don't have to be realistic.

They can be any shape and size that you want.

True or false? The shape of a puppet has no impact on how the puppet's character is communicated.

What do you think? Well done if you said false.

Like we've just said, the shape of the puppet can help communicate different elements of its character.

So over to you for our second task: Design an imaginative 2D puppet that represents you.

So you might want to think, "What is it that I want to show about myself?" Maybe you could even make some notes or sketch out some ideas.

So the first thing that you need to do after you've decided what it is that you want your puppet to show is to think about creating some shapes.

So you'll want to draw and cut out different body parts and really think about considering using geometric or organic shapes.

So you might want to do a whole selection of arms in different shapes and sizes.

Legs, again, you could have four of each.

And then you can pick and choose or use multiple limbs on your puppet.

You also want to think about a body shape.

So you might have an organic body shape or a more mathematical shape.

And it's really nice if you wanna cut out some animal characteristics as well for your puppet.

So this is a bit like a mix and match puppet of all the different shapes and sizes.

For the head or for the limbs, you could also try folding a piece of paper in half, cutting some shapes out, and then opening it up, and that might be a really unexpected shape you could use somewhere on your puppet design.

So once you've got all of your shapes for your puppet, maybe take some darker paper, and lay out all of the different, the body, the head, the different limbs, where you think you would like them.

So we're thinking about the position of the shapes as well and how that might show the character that you're aiming for, like in the examples we've just seen, so like experimenting with the posture.

Pause the video here while you design an imaginative puppet.

So let's take a look at what your work may have looked like.

And we're thinking about these arrangement of the different body parts onto the black paper.

And you can see here, the body's been made with a geometric more angular shape, and other parts have been much more organic and flowing and of different sizes as well.

And then maybe thinking about one or two or maybe more positions and which one you prefer and why.

Okay, let's move on to our last learning cycle: Decorating puppets.

Which of these decorative patterns is henna art? Take a good look.

Well done if you said a.

This is an example of henna art that's been intricately painted onto the hands.

Let's take a look at some examples of different cultures that use decorative elements in their designs.

So Otomi from Mexico uses colourful animals and plants.

Tartan from Scotland, which you might be familiar with, uses chequered geometric patterns.

Mud Cloth from Mali uses these bold, very geometric symbols in their designs.

Mehndi from India uses these intricate, and again, another key word, the organic vines and flowers.

So we can start to see, this is just a a sprinkle of examples, but how these cultures are using very different approaches to the decorative elements for their traditional arts and craft work.

Ndebele from South Africa uses very bold geometric shapes, again, one of our keywords, and Wycinanki from Poland use this very symmetrical floral and animal cutout.

So these are made from paper.

So we are really thinking about here how patterns connect the storytelling with the culture and the symbolism.

Quick check for understanding.

Patterns can be decorative and hold cultural or symbolic meaning.

Well done if you answered True.

Patterns are often both decorative and carry cultural or symbolic meanings.

And they can represent people's identity, tradition, and history.

These pupils are discussing how they might use this idea of global patterns to decorate their puppets.

Jun says, " I want to use pattern to represent parts of my identity, like the Chinese Shou symbol." And Alex says his puppet looks strong, so he's gonna think about how is he going to use these patterns to show strength his work.

And Sofia says, "I'll mix free-flowing, nature-inspired shapes with geometric patterns." So how could you use pattern to enhance your puppet design and communicate elements that represent you? And there's a couple of examples of images here that show different approaches to pattern.

Now over to you for our next task.

Experiment with decorating your puppet from Task B.

Here's an example of decorating the puppet using a fluid background.

And here, you can see I'm dabbing ink on the wet paper to create organic patterns.

This is a really nice way of creating a pattern where you don't have much control about the outcome, but it's beautiful to see how the ink spreads onto the paper.

If you do this technique, you may want to just be careful to leave some white sections of paper coming through as this creates a really nice contrast in your work.

And this technique can be done using watercolour or ink, and it can be done in any colour.

It might even represent something about your personality.

Another way of creating pattern is by creating a controlled background.

So here you can see that I'm printing that idea of a geometric shape, a circle, onto the paper.

And you can use any objects to do this.

You could even try combining the two patterns if you're interested in what effect that might make.

So then thinking about these global patterns or patterns that inspire you or might show aspects of your personality.

And you could research some, or you could use some of these examples as inspiration.

And these will add another layer of visual interest to the decoration of your puppet.

So the materials you might want to use for this, maybe pen or pencil, so waiting for the background to dry a bit first.

Pause the video here, and I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

So next we're gonna assemble.

So we're gonna stick down and reflect on the work that you've produced today.

So think about how are you gonna secure your puppet? Is it gonna be glue onto the black paper? Or maybe if you want a movable puppet, you might think about using map pins or string, depending on how you want to control it.

Is it gonna be for a performance, or is it gonna be displayed, like Chila Burman as an artwork on the wall? Have a quick think about the successes of your puppet as well.

What did you enjoy the most? Or maybe you can think about, is there anything you would change if you did it again or anything you would develop, and why? Take a moment here to assemble and reflect on your puppet.

Let's take a look at what your puppet may look like.

So in this example, you can see there's lots of animal characteristics.

You may have noticed the beak and also the spikes and a monkey's tail.

And Laura says that she used the ink background with flowing, nature-inspired patterns.

If you look really closely, you can see the pen added over the top, and she added the beak to make her puppet look like it's singing like a bird and also running, the two things she loves.

In this example, Jacob says, "I used organic shapes for my puppet's body to make it look like it's a monkey with lots of energy.

I arranged it to appear like it's dancing because that's my favourite hobby." So I wonder how you found this task.

I hope you had a good time making your puppet.

Let's look at a summary for today's lesson.

Puppets come in different forms, and they can be 2D or 3D.

They can be made from different materials and come in various sizes.

Puppets can tell stories, challenge ideas, and promote political change.

Puppet designs can reflect cultural heritage, identity, and belonging.

Some puppets reinforce stereotypes based on appearance, culture, or behaviour.

Thank you for learning with me today and I look forward to seeing you soon.