Danielle and I had been talking off and on at work about launching a new puppet series since the winter months, and by around April it seemed like we had some really good ideas but few resources to pull them off. By April, I felt like we really needed to sink into something a little smaller before we took on a long term puppetry project.
Then, in late spring the local WAAC program posted a message on their Facebook page asking if there were any community members who would be interested in visiting the kids and covering a topic. So, naturally, I thought that maybe this was something I could do. At that point, this would have been merely a lecture, and maybe I would bring along a couple of puppets for show and tell.
I had met Tonya the first time I attended the Midland Comic Con, and actually bought a puppet from her. I chatted with her more after she joined a club I started up called the Central Michigan Area Puppetry Club. Knowing a little more about her background, I reached out to her and asked her if she might be interested in helping out. I suggested that she could wear her full-sized Sweetums costume I know that she had built, and she mentioned that she could talk about building puppets.
As I thought through the structure and contents of the program, I knew that it needed to be informative about puppetry while at the same time engaging. I had seen examples of different types of puppet shows, and usually the puppets would do things like talk to the audience, ask questions, even bring them into the story in one way or another.
While I was attending the Motor City Comic Con in Novi, Michigan, I watched a panel which mixed Dungeons & Dragons with puppets. The puppets were basically playing D&D with a human as the dungeon master. I could see that the human element was important to keep the performance of the puppets flowing.
I asked Danielle if she would join us in the role of a type of host or M.C. throughout the program. She could start out the program, and then respond to Wyatt, my puppet, and Sweetums as they entered or left the stage. From the beginning, Wyatt brought a lot of humor to the program with his story about being an astronaut. His bits grew into a storyline which involved knowing an alien, and then that alien makes an appearance later in the program. I kind of thought of it as a Big Bird and Snuffleupagus type of scenario.
We asked the WAAC coordinators to work with their kids on building their own hand puppets so that they could have them during the program. This was a key element because we referenced them a number of times during the program, and there were two segments for which they needed them. For Danielle’s segment, the kids filled out brief one paged profiles describing characteristics such as their puppet’s name, favorite food, and hobbies. During the program, Danielle spent a little bit of time asking the kids about their puppets.
During my segment, I talked about three key aspects of puppetry: lip sync, eye focus, and ground. I reinforced the ideas by asking the kids to join me in exercises using their hand puppets.
During the final segment, Tonya talked to the kids about building puppets, and the different types puppets that puppeteers use in their performances.
On Thursday, July 10 we visited WAAC programs at Winn Elementary School in the morning, and then Shepherd Elementary School in the afternoon. Our set up consisted of a sound system, stands and a curtain for the hand puppet, and a table where Tonya displayed her puppets. I positioned a camera in front of the curtain so that I would be able to monitor my performance during the program using a laptop.
We felt like the kids and coordinators at both programs truly appreciated our performances, and we are grateful for the chance to visit and share our love for puppetry. We hope to share the program with other audiences in the future.