Puppetry
“Puppetry” is a type of performance art which encompasses many different forms: hand puppet and rod, marionettes, ventriloquism, stop motion, etc. For the sake of this article, we are going to focus on hand puppet and rod.
Performing with a Puppet
When you are performing with a typical hand puppet, you give it life by controlling three things: mouth, hands, and the voice. As you speak for the puppet, you want to create the illusion that the words you’re saying are coming out of the puppet’s mouth. You do this by lining up the movement of its mouth with your words. This is called lip sync. You can accomplish this by listening for the syllables in the words that you speak, and opening the puppet’s mouth on each syllable. The best way to practice this is by counting. As you count up from one, most of the numbers have just one syllable, so the puppet’s mouth would open once. But, seven has two syllables, so you would want to open and close your puppet’s mouth twice.
Here is a video which goes into more depth:
The last method for controlling your puppet is by lifting or moving its arms. Normally, you would control a puppet’s arms with rods. To keep their arm movements realistic, think about how it looks when you use your arms to give someone a hug, wave, or express strong emotions.
There is a lot more to think about when you are performing a puppet, but this is good start. Here is another useful video: