Hand and Rod Puppet Manipulation

Sunday March 22nd – 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Lampoon’s first show, Clowning Around, used a simple hand-puppet technique with mime for the two clown puppets to tell their stories. Greater attention was given to details of the movement because, without words, the movement of the puppets became the language to communicate with the audience. This knowledge became a great tool in the production of Lampoon’s other shows and helped inspire the worldwide appreciation of the company.

In the workshop, attention will be on using the most effective movement, isolating those movements by removing unnecessary moves, to be able to lead the focus of your audience. Participants will also construct their own hand puppet “glove”, following Johan’s effective technique.

Recommended companion workshop – Finding Voices for Puppets

Instructor:  Johan van der Gun Johan, one of the founders of Lampoon Puppettheatre in 1972, stayed with the company as artistic director while also fulfilling many other positions.  Over the years Lampoon Puppettheatre represented Canadian puppetry at about 50 different festivals in about 25 different countries.  While pursuing many different styles of puppetry one show, Clowning Around, did remain their favourite.  The show uses a simple hand-puppet technique but, because of its excellent manipulation, was loved by many audiences and won several awards.

Introduction to Marionettes

Rescheduled to March 29th   10 a.m. to 5 pm.

In this class the participants will gain a sense of how critically important gravity, leverage and fulcrums are to marionettes.   Everyone will make their own simple yet effective cloth marionette and learn how to string their puppet. Everyone will then learn to manipulate their puppet through a series of exploration and movement exercises. 

Instructor:  David Powell

David and his sister Ann started their puppetry journey with marionettes at the ages of 7 and 8.  He has been a co-artistic director of Puppetmongers Theatre since establishing it with Ann in 1974.  With the company he has invented new ideas in puppet theatre, created many award winning puppet productions and toured extensively.