Sock it to me!

How to create using the magic of surprise.

 Workshops for making puppets and for creating characters.

Rebecca Saunders

 

The following describes one long or two separate workshops for making puppets.

Project length for the classroom: three 50-minute sessions from start to finish.

Project length for a workshop: one 90-minute session, if puppets are provided.

 

Overview

These workshops combine techniques from puppet making and from playwriting to create a character for you or your students to use in the classroom.

 

In this workshop, we will use the enormous evocative powers of fabrics, textures, shapes, and colors have that can help us shape our characters. Participants will be guided by their reactions to materials I’ve supplied to create interesting characters from puppets. 

 

When all the puppets are finished (or nearly finished) we create dramatic scenarios based on a handout (below) and some suggestions for dramatic interaction, practice letting our puppets speak and, and discuss the workshop experience and its use of Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence theory and applications. 

 

Then we make plans for a performance!

 

 

Let’s get started.

 

You may provide the soft sculpture puppet

or have your participants make their own.

 

To make your own:

 

Here is how to create the basic puppet, a soft sculpture puppet.  This puppet is based on the work of Bruce Chessé and Suzanne Barthel for the soft sculpture puppet design.  (See their video Making &Using Puppets in the Primary Grades, 1992.)

Tools:

Needle and thread

Scissors

Arleene’s tacky glue

Bostitch B-8 Stapling Pliers (Ordinary staplers generally don’t work as well.)

 

Materials:

One knee-high stocking or a sock

Polyfill stuffing—2 oz. per puppet

One 12” dowel or bamboo stick

One 14” x 16” cloth

One kabob skewer or chopstick

A large variety of odds and ends:

            Swatches of all kinds of fabric, even paper and tissue

            Boxes of ribbons, felt, foam, buttons, notions, etc.

            Yarn or fake fur

            Recyclables

            Small items from yard sales that you couldn’t pass up but have no idea what to do with

 

The key here is variety.   I like to have the items in separate boxes by category with a little tag sticking up that announces, for example, Ribbons or Feathers.

Who can resist a treasure hunt?

 

Directions for making the soft sculpture sock puppet:

 

1. Stuff the stocking or sock with polyfill stuffing.  Don’t fill the sock too tightly or the nose will be hard to make.  This is the puppet’s head and should be a little larger than the size of your fist.
2. Make a hole in the center of the polyfill stuffing, dip the dowel into glue, and insert the dowel all the way to the far end of the sock, to the top of what will be its head.
3. Pull or pinch a nose shape. Remember that the nose is in the middle of the face. 
4. Put a staple with a Bostitch B-8 Stapling Pliers on either side of the pinch. You can also stitch the nose into shape.

Now for the decoration.

And the surprises.

Just who do we have here???

 

One of the standard techniques for stimulating creativity that I’ve come across in writers’ workshops is when the facilitator presents an evocative image.  The image might be a realistic photograph of elderly women chatting at a reunion or a surrealist painting of a girl leading her pet bear on a leash.  Quickly we begin to write, almost before we have time to think, repress, edit, or filter out impressions.  The unexpectedness of the image triggers our creative juices.

 

We are caught by surprise, and the equally unexpected within us has a chance to surface.  The surprise frees us to react and to write without preconceived notions of the creative process getting in the way, and sometimes our mind’s unfiltered reactions allows us to write something new and different.

 

 

So what does this have to do with puppets?

 

Like pictures or objects, fabrics, textures, shapes, and colors have enormous evocative powers that can help us shape our characters. In this workshop, participants will be guided by their reactions to materials I’ve supplied to create interesting characters from puppets. 

Sock it to Me!  Creating Drama using Soft Sculpture Puppets and Your Imagination.

 

Here is how we proceed:

 

 

Participants can make their own soft sculpture puppets or we can begin with soft sculpture sock or stocking puppets that I’ve brought -- a soft sculpture head, a rod, and an undecorated costume.  (I am indebted to Bruce Chessé and Suzanne Barthel for the soft sculpture puppet design.  See their video Making &Using Puppets in the Primary Grades, 1992.  Also see the above directions.)

 

Go to the boxes of materials and choose what strikes your fancy.  Again, the more variety, the better. Choose fabrics with colors or designs that you have a strong reaction to, without planning what you will do with your choices.  Try to go with what catches your eye rather than first thinking through what you want.

 

We want to put our surprise and suggestibility to work for us instead of beginning with an idea and working from there. 

 

Interesting things happen when we relinquish control of our materials and let them speak to us.

 

You will do the final dressing and decorating of your puppet.  You will have choices of fabrics, doo-dads, feathers, beads, found objects from yard sales—you name it.

 

 

1. Using materials from the boxes of surprises, create an eye design, using two or even three colors and shapes. Remember that eyes are not just simple dots on the face.  Glue the shapes on after experimenting with their placement.
2. Add a mouth and ears, if you want ears.  Or hair and a hat.
3. Select a piece of fabric for a costume.  Cut a small slit in its middle.  Dress your puppet and stitch, glue, or staple the costume at the neck.
4. If you’d like, you can cut a T-shirt shape.  Or add pants or a skirt.  Add pockets, collars, trim.
5. Make hands of felt or paper.  Glue or staple the hands onto the end of the arms. Remember which direction the thumb goes in on the hand you’re working on.  Then glue a rod one arm at the wrist.

As you begin to assemble your puppet’s costume and its details, think about how you are shaping its personality.  Your choice of materials and details will govern the personality of your character.

 

As you create your stocking or sock puppet and continue to draw from the bins of materials, think about what the materials contribute to your character.  Notice how your choices affect your puppet’s personality and how your puppet changes [and its design changes] as its character emerges.

Let it happen!

 After you have finished, look at your puppet. 

Concentrate on it, question it, and let it give you the answers!

 

 

 

We spend about an hour decorating our puppets [if the basic soft sculpture puppets have been provided] and letting the puppeteers get to know their creations.  I have a handout of questions for developing the puppet character based on the surprise and reaction the creator of the puppet feels about the created object.  I also do quite a bit of side coaching when I see what the participants have developed.

 

Then, we see how the puppets react to each other.  Even as they introduce and interview each other, the drama starts to happen!

 

 

Creating Character

 

As you make your stocking or sock puppet and draw from the bins of materials, think about what the materials contribute to your character.  Notice how your choices affect your puppet’s personality and how your puppet changes [and its design changes] as its character emerges.

 After you have finished, look at your puppet.  

Concentrate on it and let it give you the answers!

 

Let the puppet become a character in a book you are reading.  What would it say to a character from another book?

 

OR

 

Ask yourself or your students to think about questions such as these:

 

What is your puppet’s age and sex?  Is your puppet human or animal or perhaps an insect?

What does your puppet like to eat?

Where is your puppet from?  Does it come from your country or a different country?

Where does it live now?  What was its favorite subject in school?

Is your puppet fashionable?  Eccentric?   Conservative or ahead of its time?

What does your puppet like to do?  Any hobbies?  Or collections?

Does your puppet sing or dance?  Play an instrument?  Enjoy cooking or gardening?

Does your puppet like to read?  To fish or sky dive or do math?

 

What is your puppet’s attitude towards life?  Is your puppet shy?

Extroverted?  Prim and proper? Imaginative?  Goofy?  Scary?

[Note:  Children respond well to shy puppets.  They become the puppet’s friend.]

Is your puppet an artist?  Or a naturalist?  A comedian?  A scientist?

 

What is your puppet’s place in the community?  Does she or he or it belong to any clubs?

Play any sports?  Sing in a choir or play in an orchestra?  Go to school?  Experiment with thermodynamics?

 

What is your puppet’s occupation in the classroom?  How can your puppet help you with your students?  [A word of warning: Don’t be like one teacher who brought out her puppet when the students used improper language.  The incidence of improper language skyrocketed!]

 

Imagine your puppet’s voice.  Try for an interesting voice.  It’s best to avoid

a high-pitched head voice if you want something that’s interesting.

 

And finally, what is your puppet’s name?

 

Your puppet is finished.  Now we will bring her, him, or it to life.

We’ll end with puppet interviews, based on these questions.

 

In groups of two or three, think about how your different characters would react to each other.  Spend a few minutes interviewing each other, getting to know each other.  You’ll probably find that they speak to each other quite spontaneously!

 

OR

 

What about a situation?  Let the situation make your puppet’s personality become physical.  

We will divide up according to the kinds of creatures we have developed.

What would your puppet do in the following predicament? 

 

First puppet:  Whew!  Looks like we’re lost in this swamp!

Second puppet:  I warned you not to take that right turn!

Third puppet:   Well, we’re in a pickle now.  Any ideas?

 

 

OR

 

Imagine a situation from your classroom behavior or from what you are studying in which one puppet wants something from the other.  One puppet says “Please?!” while the other replies “No!”

When then does the first puppet say to get what s/he/it wants?

 

Show us your group’s solution.  These skits may be improvised or written down.

 

 

 

And from the other end of the process . . .

            “In the making of something complicated and beautiful, there comes to the growing child a             deep sense of competence and ability.  The sense of accomplishment . . . is one of the       important gifts handwork gives. Hands, which felt awkward and clumsy, have become skillful.  Obstacles and difficulties have been overcome with great patience and      perseverance.  Wonder and enthusiasm have been born with the hands’ marvelous skillful            capacity.”

                        Fern Sloan, as cited in Puppetry in education and therapy: Unlocking doors to                                the mind and heart, ed. Judith O’Hare, p. 49)