Puppet Workshop – (1) Balloon Marionettes
While attending college at Illinois State University, I was lucky enough to enroll in a Puppetry Arts class. The class was fairly basic, and included some of the rich history of puppetry, some basic performance skills, and some very basic puppet-making. One of the “projects” we did involved very simple “Balloon Marionettes.” We did a group performance using these very simple puppets as part of our assignment.
After college, I had the fortune of traveling with the group “Up with People” for a year. We traveled all over the United States and Europe, performing in a musical show and performing “community service” activities in the places we visited. One of the things we frequently were asked to do was to appear in local classrooms, discussing our group. If you are unfamiliar with “Up with People,” their main purpose is to bring the world together through music and performance. We frequently discussed diversity and tolerance of those who are different when we went into those classrooms.
I was asked by a school teacher in Germany to “teach” a class for her while I was visiting. She wanted a simple workshop that would tell her students what the group I was traveling with was all about. I had told her that I had studied Elementary Education in college, and had even taught for a short time. I also had told her I was a puppeteer. A light bulb went off over my head, and a simple puppetry workshop was created.
The first step? Build the marionettes!
Posts in the Series
- Puppet Workshop – (1) Balloon Marionettes
- Puppet Workshop – (2) Building Balloon Marionettes
- Puppet Workshop – (3) Diversity Performance
- Puppet Workshop – (4) Post Discussion
Diane began performing as a puppeteer when she was only six years old. Her first marionette, Clippo the Clown, a gift from her Grandmother, accompanied Diane to school every year through college. As an adult, Diane began making and performing hand puppets. She writes the shows, fabricates the puppets and props, performs all of the puppetry, and even serves as her own lighting and sound engineer!
