Taking a Puppet Through Its Paces

I have used puppets for decades in my teaching and public library career, but this just took my breath away.

First, watch these TED Talks about the Handspring Puppet Company:

I found the trailer of the National Theatre’s smash hit, War Horse, quite moving.

My appetite was whetted, so I went searching for more videos on YouTube. There is a whole series of diaries about the War Horse show, to feed my new horse puppet fixation.

…………..War Horse Video Diary 1 …………..War Horse Video Diary 2 …………..War Horse Video Diary 3 …………..War Horse Video Diary 4 …………..War Horse Video Diary 5 …………..War Horse Video Diary 6

The co-operation and co-ordination required by the puppeteers is magical to watch. They make the horse come alive. Of course, you must be willing to suspend your disbelief ~ but even if you are not willing  you can still marvel at the engineering of such a puppet and the skills of manipulation required to take it through its paces.

Any puppet that tries to be alive will get a boost from my belief. I have delightfully spent much effort attempting to turn nouns into verbs myself.

#puppeteers #comealive #horsepuppet #WarHorseVideoDiaries #puppets #WarHorse #HandspringPuppetCompany #willingsuspensionofdisbelief #TEDtalks