Recycled Puppets II- Rod and Shadow

Rod puppets are built on dowels (the puppet's spine) with rods to manipulate the arms. Rods are usually attached to wrists and feet (perhaps ankles, if the puppet needs to dance). They can be built around a dowel (approximately the width of a broomstick so they're easy to grasp for long periods of time), or be a hand puppet that uses rods to manipulate the arms, called a hand-in-rod. Rod puppets are very old; examples of ivory rod puppets have been found in Egyptian tombs. Kermit the Frog is a rod puppet because rods move his arms. The photo is of a dancer rod puppet from Bengal.

Shadow puppets continue to be popular in the Mid- and Far-East. Some cultures don't allow live performances of plays, so shadow puppets fill that dramatic gap. Shadow puppets in China go back two millenia, where they played to all social classes, not just the nobility. The ones cited are from Bali; similar shadow puppets, called "wayang kulit," are from Java (see photo). Shadow puppets also traveled to the west to Turkey, where they're called Karagoz.

Recycled Puppets

Another subject that I had for that freelance gig that ended early (for which I have yet to be paid) was puppets. The odd thing was that as opposed to film criticism, I actually know something about puppets. I’ve built them, manipulated them, performed voices and manipulated puppets in plays. But my editor would not agree to run my puppet writing. So here it is.

Though puppets first are in our lives when we're children, they have been around a very long time, the past 30,000 years. They were some variety of representational figures used to perform for an audience. Puppets (in Greek "neuropasta" is "to pull the string") were first written about by Xenophon, ca. 522 BCE. After the Dark Ages, Roman Catholics used marionettes to perform miracle and mystery plays. Out of these grew comedic puppet plays, and finally the Italian Commedia dell'Arte. Today, puppets are still popular in some parts of the world: marionettes perform operas in Vienna and Salzburg; the Czechs still attend rod, marionette and black light puppet shows; and American Basil Twist builds and choreographs new shows frequently, his latest being a "Petrushka."

Small children play with hand puppets, made from socks, gloves or paper bags. They are also used therapeutically, e.g., for children with speech impediments. The above link and photo are from the Victorian and Albert Museum, which has a description of hand puppets, with reference to Punch and Judy (both in England and Europe), and other important puppet characters, like Faust. It is not chockfull of puppet trivia, like the fact that author George Sand had a big thing for hand puppets. One thing that drove Johann von Goethe to write his "Faust" is that the story was "only" performed as a puppet play; he want to return the legend to the pantheon of German literature.