Since the beginning of February we’ve been doing a series of weekly workshops with a team of eight new puppeteers we’ve recruited for some upcoming projects we’re developing at the Unraku Studio. Like the rest of the company, our new puppeteers come from a variety of backgrounds including theatre, dance, animation and puppetry. Each week they’ve been learning the basics of on-camera puppetry; how to perform using video monitors and how to use different types of puppets, including simple rod puppets, Bunraku-style full table top characters and more traditional hand and rod TV puppets.

The group recently did an exercise we (well, Andrew) dubbed “Monster Shakespeare” that involved each puppeteer selecting, memorizing and staging a monologue, sonnet or soliloquy by William Shakespeare. They then took turns performing each piece using some hand and rod Monster puppets we have at the studio for puppetry practice. You can see the results above.

Although a few of our group of eight have performed puppet theatre, none of them have any significant on-camera puppetry experience so it’s very exciting to see everyone steadily getting better and better each week. The workshops are scheduled to run through at least the end of August and we can’t wait to see how good our new recruits will be by the end of the summer!