Webinar Review: Exploring Found Puppetry by Sinead O'Callaghan

Hamlet said, ‘I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space’. Perhaps his moniker, ‘The Puppet Master’, has more literal connotations than we first thought, because this is exactly the philosophy Sinead O'Callaghan, (Education Officer, Les Enfants Terribles) recommends in her webinar, ‘Exploring Found Puppetry’.

The whys and the hows are dissected, vital for ‘Why Bird’ younger students, and also older ones considering a career in design–so you can go straight from screen to classroom stage. By the end you will have a puppet at your fingertips as well as 400-plus resources on The Curiosity Index. You can also share your creations via #foundit.

In true surrealist style, Found Puppetry is all about finding the extraordinary in the everyday, a world of pure imagination is fashioned from a mongrel assortment of les objets trouvés. In the practical demo, Sinead scrunches a piece of paper to see where it is drawing breath from–then she discovers its physical make-up, its head and ‘tail’. Its end point and its beginning–a very humble one in this case, much like Les Enfants Terribles’ own. Twenty years ago, a group of friends from the National Youth Theatre took their ground up approach to puppetry from the middle of the country to the top, with a show for Edinburgh.

Who knows how much more havoc the Prince of Denmark would have wreaked if he had been a puppet.

To quote theatre designer Sam Wyer, who was on hand for questions: puppetry is ‘Creating physically impossible characters that defy reality’. In some cases, literally larger than life; experimenting with scale in this way can be a great precursor to grasping it in more abstract contexts, such as in lighting. Sinead reveals the punk spirit at the heart of Les Enfants Terribles: ‘Go rogue, go big, go ridiculous’, is the rallying cry. But la resistance is also key; setting boundaries can help unleash more creative freedom. For example, a primary colour palette is more enabling than a double rainbow of choice. A vocal gesture, such as a hiccup or a sigh, is a better segue in than the daunting prospect of devising a full script: the hiccup and the sigh being that the ‘endgame’ is often the goal today for students and pressured teachers, to complete the task and produce the product. Just a small hurdle however, for these master puppeteers.

The Explore Found Puppetry webinar was produced by We Teach Drama, whose online and in-person CPD runs throughout the year. Go to http://www.weteachdrama.com