The Muppets gave puppetry a whole new look and life in the mid-twentieth century. "Puppet-fever" engulfed Americans. With the new public interest in puppetry, both in America and worldwide, Christians began to see the potential in this art form.[citation needed]
Beginning then and continuing to this day, churches in nearly every Christian denomination have started small puppet groups. Usually such groups' purpose is to serve their own children's ministry programs, but some reach outside their own walls, performing for other churches or secular venues. Some teams travel internationally to third-world countries, where children and adults have neither experienced this kind of entertainment, nor heard about Jesus Christ.[citation needed]
Christian puppetry has grown so large that thousands of performers gather yearly at festivals to showcase, share, and learn more about their art form. One of the largest Christian puppet supplies distributors, One Way Street, hosts regional festivals to serve church teams, as well as a worldwide festival (I-Fest), lasting an entire week.[citation needed]
Techniques
Blacklight Puppet
Though rod-arm puppetry continues to be the most common technique in Christian circles, some other forms have begun to gain popularity.
Blacklight puppetry
Blacklight puppetry capitalizes on the novelty of ultra-violet lights, or black light. Lighting the staging area with only these specialized lights, the audience can see only the objects that are coated with a special paint. The idea of controlling what the audience sees is a major responsibility of any puppeteer, and blacklight has provided a new way of accomplishing it.
Dowel rods
Dowel rod puppetry combines interpretive dance and the use of (typically) two simple dowels. Routines usually involve a song that tells a story or conveys a message while performers move in a choreographed dance, employing their rods in equally choreographed ways.
Related Research Articles
The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which involve the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Performing arts include a range of disciplines which are performed in front of a live audience, including theatre, music, and dance.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to theatre:
Puppetry is a form of theatre or performance that involves the manipulation of puppets – inanimate objects, often resembling some type of human or animal figure, that are animated or manipulated by a human called a puppeteer. Such a performance is also known as a puppet production. The script for a puppet production is called a puppet play. Puppeteers use movements from hands and arms to control devices such as rods or strings to move the body, head, limbs, and in some cases the mouth and eyes of the puppet. The puppeteer sometimes speaks in the voice of the character of the puppet, while at other times they perform to a recorded soundtrack.
A marionette is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a marionettist. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by using a vertical or horizontal control bar in different forms of theatres or entertainment venues. They have also been used in films and on television. The attachment of the strings varies according to its character or purpose.
Bunraku is a form of traditional Japanese puppet theatre, founded in Osaka in the beginning of the 17th century, which is still performed in the modern day. Three kinds of performers take part in a bunraku performance: the Ningyōtsukai or Ningyōzukai (puppeteers), the tayū (chanters), and shamisen musicians. Occasionally other instruments such as taiko drums will be used. The combination of chanting and shamisen playing is called jōruri and the Japanese word for puppet is ningyō. It is used in many plays.
Concert dance is dance performed for an audience. It is frequently performed in a theatre setting, though this is not a requirement, and it is usually choreographed and performed to set music.
Wayang, also known as wajang, is a traditional form of puppet theatre play originating from the Indonesian island of Java. Wayang refers to the entire dramatic show. Sometimes the leather puppet itself is referred to as wayang. Performances of wayang puppet theatre are accompanied by a gamelan orchestra in Java, and by gender wayang in Bali. The dramatic stories depict mythologies, such as episodes from the Hindu epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, as well as local adaptations of cultural legends. Traditionally, a wayang is played out in a ritualized midnight-to-dawn show by a dalang, an artist and spiritual leader; people watch the show from both sides of the screen.
Fire performance is a group of performance arts or skills that involve the manipulation of fire. Fire performance typically involves equipment or other objects made with one or more wicks which are designed to sustain a large enough flame to create a visual effect.
Street theatre is a form of theatrical performance and presentation in outdoor public spaces without a specific paying audience. These spaces can be anywhere, including shopping centres, car parks, recreational reserves, college or university campus and street corners. They are especially seen in outdoor spaces where there are large numbers of people. The actors who perform street theatre range from buskers to organised theatre companies or groups that want to experiment with performance spaces, or to promote their mainstream work. It was a source of providing information to people when there were no sources of providing information like television, radio etc. Nowadays, street play is used to convey a message to the crowd watching it. Street play is considered to be the rawest form of acting, because one does not have a microphone or loud speakers.
Shadow play, also known as shadow puppetry, is an ancient form of storytelling and entertainment which uses flat articulated cut-out figures which are held between a source of light and a translucent screen or scrim. The cut-out shapes of the puppets sometimes include translucent color or other types of detailing. Various effects can be achieved by moving both the puppets and the light source. A talented puppeteer can make the figures appear to walk, dance, fight, nod and laugh.
A hand puppet is a type of puppet that is controlled by the hands that occupies the interior of the puppet. A glove puppet is a variation of hand puppets. Rod puppets require one of the puppeteer's hands inside the puppet glove holding a rod which controls the head, and the puppet's body then hangs over most or all of the forearm of the puppeteer, and possibly extends further. Other parts of the puppet may be controlled by different means, e.g., by rods operated by the puppeteer's free hand, or strings or levers pulled the head or body. A smaller variety, simple hand puppets often have no significant manipulable parts at all. Finger puppets are not hand puppets as they are used only on a finger.
Theatre of China has a long and complex history. Traditional Chinese theatre, generally in the form of Chinese opera, is musical in nature. Chinese theatre can trace its origin back a few millennia to ancient China, but the Chinese opera started to develop in the 12th century. Western forms like the spoken drama, western-style opera, and ballet did not arrive in China until the 20th century.
Petrushka is a stock character of Russian folk puppetry. It was first introduced by traveling Italian performers in the first third of the 19th century during a period of Westernization in Russian culture. While most core characters came from Italy, they were soon transformed by the addition of material from the Russian cultural context.' Petrushkas are traditionally hand puppets. The character is a kind of a jester, a slapstick protagonist distinguished by his red dress, a red kolpak, and often a long nose.
Dadi Pudumjee is a leading puppeteer in India and he is the founder of The Ishara Puppet Theatre Trust. He was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1992.
Kathputli is a string puppet theatre, native to Rajasthan, India, and is the most popular form of Indian puppetry. Being a string marionette, it is controlled by a single string that passes it from the top of the puppet over the puppeteers.
Pakistan National Council of the Arts was set up to spearhead the development of arts in Pakistan by an Act of Parliament in 1973. It aims to build a robust arts ecosystem by creating an environment conducive to the flourishing of the arts, where the arts are accessible to everyone and artists and art groups have the commitment, financial support and resources, and to excel at home, and on the world stage. PNCA policies are framed by its Board of Governors which reports to the Federal Minister for National Heritage and Culture Division.
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. It is the oldest form of drama, though live theatre has now been joined by modern recorded forms. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. Places, normally buildings, where performances regularly take place are also called "theatres", as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον, itself from θεάομαι.
A puppet is an object, often resembling a human, animal or mythical figure, that is animated or manipulated by a person called a puppeteer. Puppetry is an ancient form of theatre which dates back to the 5th century BC in Ancient Greece.
The Budapest Puppet Theater has been open since 1949, with its primary venue currently situated at 69 Andrássy út, Budapest. Since then, both children and adults are warmly welcome to their performances, because they have a motto that “the puppet is not the matter of age, but a genre.”
A giant puppet is a puppet which is tall enough to be easily visible to a street crowd while being manipulated by puppeteers, on the same level. It is therefore most suitable for processions, street theatre and performance art, although some large theatrical animations can be used for the same purpose. Giant puppets are usually articulated and made from a lightweight material. Some are manipulated by puppeteers using rods, strings, stilts, other mechanisms, or a combination of these. Giant puppets have been used worldwide for street entertainment, celebrations or other purposes from ancient times, and they continue in use and in development today. Of the traditional giant rod puppets, the Chinese dragon New Year puppet is "perhaps the most recognized form of the parade puppet". Of the most recent examples, Royal de Luxe of France has produced a notable set of giant string puppets.
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