puppets in prague

The first day is spent having a lot of fun with a professional puppeteer and other students playing with puppets in our workshop. Students try out different kinds of marionettes and discover what they want for their own puppet. There is still time to change that witch design to a princess, or to make the puppet hang on a wire rather than stings...

Now it is time to make a final decision about the design and start on the technical drawing: rulers, straight lines, central lines, millimeters and centimeters...hard work!

An exciting day! Wooden blocks emergng from the circular saw. But HOW to carve?

So now we put the wood onto the bandsaw and make a silhouette based on the puppet design... a head is emerging from the band saw! Time to start chiselling.

Here it is. The head is looking around! What? It is missing hands and legs?

Hands and legs are small, so let's take the small chisels and sit down under some good light.

Time for the body. Carving is going faster. And then, the moment of truth- putting the pieces togther.

The puppet's cheeks get redder, shoes emerge. The hardest decission is what colour for the eyes. A bit of paint might be good for the fingers and stockings and shoes and shoelaces and fingernails...or maybe not.

Half of our workshop turns into a fashion salon, full of big ideas and little costumes. Eva and Klara are our sewing fairies with their magic sewimg machines.

One of the most fun machines in the workshop- the lathe! Blocks of wood tranform into elegant rounded controllers

Attached strings to the body... . Now attach them to the controller... and pull! It moves! The puppet is walking; the puppet is born!

Time to make a show with the brand new puppets. Learn to walk with the new puppet, make up a story, come up with script, music, and stage design. And only one more day!

And here it is! A real show with an audience, lights and applause! Hands are sweating. The controller is slipping. So many strings to pull and still remmember our lines! But the audience loves it and it so much fun!

Our final day together... a review of the process, time to put the puppets in their bags say goodbye!