Let Your Creativity Flow I am a big proponent for teams to come up with their own concepts, scripts, and programs for two reasons. The first is the financial factor involved. It is so easy to spend a fortune to get permission to use other people’s material. The second is because is gets the creative juices of the group to flowing and helps pull the team together when they are racking their brains to come up with ideas and creating the script around their characters as opposed

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

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

“If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others...” -Tryon Edwards So Why Puppets? Puppets are magical for everyone, every age. They are magic because a puppet can literally be anything we want them to be. The puppet’s life comes from us; from our imagination is where the puppet’s life begins before we even have the puppet on our hand. George Bernard Shaw once wrote that the influence puppets had played in his development as a child was greater than that of live ac