Can I just ask, why puppets?
In a most basic sense for me personally, puppets can be anything. And as a maker a performer this is so exciting and freeing. They can be as simple as a caterpillar, they can be an old man, they can represent sadness, or the sea. If done well anything can be ‘brought to life’ and when it all clicks its genuinely magic to find yourself or your audience invested and believing in something as simple as perhaps a tablecloth is alive.
It’s hard to break the stereotypes that especially the UK and US have of puppetry, that it’s just avenue Q or punch and judy (or it’s a thing for children). If you look closely however puppets are everywhere, in adverts, in films, in theatre. They can do things that people can’t and they’re amazing story tellers.
They can tell stories with no words (for anyone who needs or prefers visual only story telling this is brilliant) They can bring a shy child out of their shell as they can breath, sit and listen and not have all the emotional weight of a human. They’ve been used in schools, in prisons, with people with dementia, to help with integration for refugees…the list goes on.
I personally think they’re a very underrated art form. Also you don’t get many opportunities to make something and get to bring it to life and kill it all in a matter of minutes, pretty exciting ;D Sorry if I rambled! x