Teaching Culture via Puppetry

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Teaching Culture via Puppetry Technology

• Dr. Lorie Annarella
• And
• Dr. Netiva Caftori

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PUPPPETRY, A LITTLE BIT OF MAGIC

• Marionette
• French word
• Little Mary
• Puppets
• Religious symbols
• Traveling troops
• Political formats

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Puppet Around the World

• Italy-pupa, meaning doll
• France- marionette includes strings and hand
• English- marionette means strings
• Orient and Middle east-rod and shadow puppets
• Japan-Bunraku, life-like puppets using 3 people

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Western Puppetry

• Began in Italy
• Puppet troops traveled all over Europe

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16th Century Puppets

• Puppeteers were accused of witchcraft and evil

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Creative Arts

• MiltonParadise Lost
• Goethe-Faust
• Hyden-wrote musical compositions for puppetry
• All influenced by puppetry
• Operas and ballets were written for puppet
  theatre
• Arlington Heights, Chicago, IL USA
• Marionettentheater, Schloss Schonbrunn, Vienna,
  Austria

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Regional Puppet Characters

• Pulichinelle-Paris
• Gulignol-Lyon
• Hanswurst-Austria
• Kasperl-Germany
• Punch-England
• Everyday occurrence
• Set up in small towns
• Kings and queens embraced puppetry

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Television and Radio

• Burt TilstromKukla, Fran and Ollie
• Sherry LewisLamb Chop
• Jim Hensen-Muppets
• Mr. Rogers-Daniel Tiger and Make Believe

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Culture and Storytelling

• Cultural heritages preserved through story
• Understanding and communication between cultures
• Can create mental pictures for the audience

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Learning Through Puppetry

• Empathy
• Problem solving
• Divergent thinking skills
• Spontaneity
• Performance
• Communication
• Risk taking

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Storytelling with a Puppet

• Basic components of literature piece
• Plot
• Setting
• Characterization
• Theme
• Point of view

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Choose a Story That

• Avoids Stereotypes
• Depicts cultural strengths as well as the
  realities of real life
• You like
• Is rich in dialog

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More Hints

• Be sure the story is age appropriate
• Consider the story length and the audience
• Practice the story, perhaps in front of a mirror

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More Hints

• Visualize the character and setting in the story
  you are telling.
• Listen to your voice. Observe pitch, projection,
  voice variation and diction.
• Do a practice session and tell your story with
  focused energy.

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We learn through experience and experiencing, and
no one teaches anyone anything.
Spolin 1950
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Puppetry is an art form that pushes the event of
on stage action to the point of complete
application of energy into the composition of
character of each puppet that is being
manipulated.
Annarella 2005
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Bibliography

• Ember, C. R. Ember, M. (1990). Cultural
  Anthropology  (6th ed.).
• Spolin Viola. (1990). Improvisation for the
  Theatre.  Evanston, IL. Northwestern University
  Press.

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Culture through Technology

• The Internet erases boundaries.
• People connect through email and the web.
• New technologies allow us to present old concepts
  in new ways.
• Even puppetry can be manipulated using new
  technology instead of hands.

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Example

• http//www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/BMLwalker.html
• This is just one example how one can control
  easily the movement of a robot, or puppet, make
  it more feminin or masculin, heavy/light,
  nervous/relaxed/ happy/sad
• something a puppeteer may need to know, but not
  the novice necessarily.
• Maybe it's a skill to be learned.  yet an astute
  programmer has just coded such a program.

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Ideas

• Other programs, not yet written, but could be,
  are those where one could pull on invisible
  strings and make the puppet move...
• Other programs for the future would be
  story-based.  You tell a story and a puppet scene
  is created as you talk...Wouldn't that be
  marvellous? 

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Current realities

• Such story telling is very possible but needs
  lots of programming time.
• For today's realities, we can create a movie
  using pictures of puppets and some movie making
  programs like Flash or MS movie maker.
• You add sounds, talks, and timings, and make it
  as smooth as you desire. 
• True, time consuming but plausible...

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2D animation

• 2D animation such as provided by Macromedia's
  Flash allows the puppeteer to make visually
  appealing moving scenes with simple or complex
  objects.
• FLASH provides helps such as "tweening" that
  simplify the creation of animation by reducing
  the number of unique "keyframes" that the artist
  draws.
• FLASH also provides for nested movie clips that
  permit multiple animations to exist in the same
  complex movie with each clip having its own time
  line.

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2D examples

• http//www.netiva.net
• http//www.neiu.edu/ncaftori/FloridaTestArea/Lori
  ePuppets.html
• http//www.neiu.edu/ncaftori/FloridaTestArea/beni
  nMovies.html

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3D animation

• 3D packages such as Maya, 3D Studio Max, Poser,
  and more allow the artist even greater capabiity
  with an increase in complexity and somewhat
  greater cost.
• Poser for instance focuses on drawing of 3D
  humanoids that are clothed, have hair, and that
  can appear to walk or run on the screen.
• 3D models can know about themselves, i.e. they
  can reflect light properly back to a viewer, they
  can allow their hair to respond to a breeze, and
  they can walk realistically like the human or
  animal that they portray.

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3D examples
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Note

• Games, films, training simulations, etc., all
  take advantage of computer animation.
• New packages such as those mentioned allow even
  the small shop or individual to afford the
  software capability that in the past might have
  been available only to a Pixar or Disney.
• The result is an increased demand for university
  graduates who know both art and a new kind of
  programming that is required to make efficient
  use of FLASH, Poser, etc.

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Benin