Get Your Name Out There Marketing is often confused with sales. Though there is a clear connection between the two, marketing is the actual act of drawing attention to one’s self or one’s product. Marketing is and will be a continually ongoing process for your puppet team. How you present yourself is marketing, how you look at events is marketing, how you project yourself on the phone to potential venue directors is marketing. Every team member should be required to always pr

Let It Glow, Let It Glow, Let It Glow Black light shows have almost become a standard with puppet performance, so much so that there is now a market just for black light performance. Black light can be used in a number of different ways and add effects that are difficult, if not impossible, to recreate any other way. Every professional puppet team should have some level of black light performance in their arsenal of productions. In writing this post, it has been brought to my

You will find that the way your lighting and sound are set up can sometimes make or break a performance. Here are some tips that will get you going in the right direction from the start. I only wish that I had someone savvy in these areas when I first started out. Hopefully you have access to some professionals of whom you can pick their brains. About the Sound Chances are that you will rarely, if ever, find yourself in a situation where just using your voice and a portable C

The Kit “Hope for the best, plan for the worst.” In a perfect world, nothing ever goes wrong, the mics never go dead mid performance, the props never break, the cds never get scratched, etc. but in the real world, as the saying goes, “what can go wrong will go wrong” so prepare for it. Back Up Everything Everyone knows that CDs get scratched, misplaced, and cracked. I have seen a computer literally shatter a disk in the disk drive. So the first thing that you want to have in

These are the things that will make you exude professionalism to the people in charge of the venue you will be performing at as well as the audience. Promptness “Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.” - William Shakespeare Being prompt goes hand-in-hand with accountability. Being reliable is important to the team, to the leadership of the team, and to those that the team will be serving. As a leader It is extremely important if you are on the leadership of your

The Performance So, now it’s performance time and you have everything organized and under control. Yes? No? Well, I hope this blog post will help you answer that question with certainty. I always suggest that, along with having a detailed program together (which I will get into later) that you never do a performance before having a minimum of five to six practices with a full-on professional quality run through. The last two practice performances should be exactly like you wo

Birds of a Feather… Ventriloquism is one of those skill sets that becomes better with time, but also gets better with proper feedback from other ventriloquists. Study masters in the field and mimic their actions and techniques until you develop a style of you own. Find a Mentor In certain ways, puppetry and ventriloquism is dying out. Less and less people are showing interest in this skill. Most of the veterans in this art would love to pass on their techniques to the next ge

What is Ventriloquism? Ventriloquism is a finely crafted art that has been mastered by a select few. The techniques of distorting one’s voice to make it seem as though it is coming from another source; in this case a puppet. Like magic, these techniques were guarded and passed down throughout the centuries. It has been used as a form of entertainment for years, and has its origins dating back to as early as the sixth century, back when many thought it to be a form of witchcra

Make Your Arms Live Rod arms are the bare-knuckle precursors to animatronics manipulation. They have to be one of the most useful tools in a puppeteer’s arsenal when trying to make a puppet seem more realistic. The arm rod allows for the puppeteer to easily move the arms of a puppet even while the puppet is talking. This is definitely one of those things where practice makes perfect. You will need to practice your technique frequently to be able to use puppet arm rods. Two R

Make It Original, Make It Yours Developing Set puppet characters can be a fun way to get and keep team members involved. For them to know that the character they do is their character and no one else can do it gives them a sense of pride and responsibility to the team. I always suggest that every team member create a character; whether they use it or not. This will really come in handy when the team does return engagements and uses a set character because audiences will know