Special Puppets

Briefly described here are three unusual types of hand puppet: finger  puppet s, rod  puppets and shadow  puppets. The little finger  puppets can do little else but walk and dance, but they do that very well. Rod puppets  can be used most effectively for serious narrative presentations such as Biblical Tableau s. Shadow  puppets are also best suited to formal, tableau-like presentations.

57. PIROUETTE

Her body (there is only the torso and the head) can be overcast in papier-mache , cast in plastic wood  or made by bending double a piece of foam rubber , binding it with adhesive tape and adding pipe cleaner arms as in A. The torso is held in place on the first and second fingers by two loops of elastic attached to the waist as shown, B. Your fingers are the legs. Make her silver dancing slippers of foil  and her arms of pipe cleaners  or cloth  and add cloth  or paper  hands . Mask your wrist with black cloth  and have her dance against a dark background.

58. PIETRE

This little Swiss clog dancer is made like Pirouette , except that his legs are extended with little built-up shoes and stockings.

59. HILDA

His dancing partner has her knees bare too—your knuckles, of course. Finger puppets  perform on small stages with open tops, so the operators can reach down into them with the puppets on their hands.

60. SUZUAAE-SAN THE SPARROW

The little bird's body should be cast in papier-mache  for lightness. Her wings are cut from cardboard or moulded Celastic and attached loosely to the body. They can be decorated with real feathers, as can the tail. Three stiff wires are needed for control from below: one to support the body, one to control each wing tip.

Rod Puppets

Construction can become very complicated. Figure A suggests a rod  puppet with the operator's hand inside the body, the finger  controlling the head, the arms controlled by rods. Figure B suggests a head on a dowel , controlled by the operator's hand inside the body. Figure C shows a fully articulated rod  puppet body made of cloth  and wood . The weight of the puppet is carried on a control wooden  dowel  running up between the legs and through the body to a point just above the shoulder yoke . The neck rests on the extension of this dowel , leaving the head free to move right and left.

The head can also be made to nod with a control wire attached at the back, as shown. The control rods  on hands and feet  are attached loosely to eye screws to allow free movement. They should be both light and strong and can be made from umbrella ribs or bicycle spokes for lightness and strength. This body is made of cloth  stuffed  with kapok and tacked to the two wooden  pieces at the shoulders and hips. A good marionette book will offer further details on fully articulated bodies . Also, see No. 76.

61. SUZUME-SAN THE PRINCESS

She consists of only head, torso and delicate arms made of fine white cloth , stuffed  with kapok and sewed across at elbow and wrist. Her torso is also of stuffed  cloth  or of wood . Her kimono drapes down from the waist, hiding the fact that she has no legs and is supported by a wooden  dowel  running up into her waist. She needs only two control rods , one at each wrist. With practice, one puppeteer should be able to make her move gracefully. Her head is stationary as shown. If you wish, it can be controlled by a wire as previously illustrated. Maybe you will be lucky enough to find a Chinese or Japanese doll  head . If not, try to model her head after such dolls pictured in books in the library. A Japanese doll  will also show you how to design her costume.

Casting Plaster

The Princess' head can be cast in fine plaster . Plaster can be finely carved and smoothed and it simulates the white complexion of a powdered Oriental maiden. A plaster  head can be cast from a plaster  shim cast  mould. Make sure the mould is well greased and that the plaster  is thoroughly mixed.
 
62. THE OLD MAN

This elderly Chinese peasant has movable arms, but no legs. His head can be cast or made from a dried apple  (See No. 84). To get the proper stoop to his old shoulders, tilt his body on the main dowel .

63. THE OLD WOMAN

Her ragged  skirt s hide the fact that she, too, is without legs. Attach the spoon permanently in her hands. Attach the bowl in which she will mix her rice cakes to the top of her prop table. Her head can also be made from a dried apple —or both her and her husband's heads can be made from quick papier-mache . In this case the irregularity and wrinkles of quick papier-m&che will be a good thing.

64. A HANDMAIDEN

She is made like the princess, but is not so pretty or so beautifully dressed. Attach her Oriental tamborine or timbrel securely to her right hand.

65. A BOX OF DEMONS

When this box  is opened with a rod  from below, a bunch of grinning devils leap up and dance and jiggle. One or two of them are on rods and agitate the rest, which are stuck to springs attached inside the box . Make the devils from quick papier-mache  or buy small lacquered devil masks from an Oriental gift shop. The lid of the box  is held in place by a spring catch, released by a string or rod  from below.

THE TONGUE-CUT SPARROW

A NARRATED CHINESE FOLK TALE 1

Act, 3 Scenes

Characters:
THE NARRATOR                   an offstage voice
SUZUME-SAN                        the sparrow
SUZUME-SAN                       the Princess
OLD MAN                               the hero
OLD WOMAN                        the villainess
HANDMAIDEN                      the Princess' attendant

Scenes:

SCENE   I. Half exterior yard, half interior.
SCENE  II. Half court, half interior of a lavish palace.
SCENE III. Same as Scene I.

A NOTE ON PRODUCTION: Recorded or live music  can be used throughout. The narrator speaks from a position in the shadows beside the stage or entirely out of sight of the audience. Puppet movement should be graceful and highly stylized. Decoration of foliage and flowers fixed to the sides of the stage does not have to be removed with scene changes. Three backgrounds  should be painted as expressively but as simply as possible on window shades , the third being a duplicate of the first. These rolled shades are arranged in sequence. Scene changes take place in full view of the audience: the shades are simply rolled slowly up at the ends of fine wires as the puppet appears to move from one locale to the other. Lighting changes can help make these changes quite impressive.

Oriental music .

NABRATOR: Once, not very long ago as time goes in Northern China, a very old woman and a very old man lived together in a tumble-down bamboo house.

The lights  come up slowly. We see a barren yard on stage right of the background; the interior of a rude bamboo hut on the left. At a table in front of the interior the old woman moves her spoon wearily around in a bowl.

NARRATOR: All their lives they had lived in this miserable house; all their lives they had toiled together for very little—a bowl of rice, a bit of fish and a rice cake at the end of the day. They had no tea. They had no wine. They had no children. They had nothing but the tumble-down house and each other. And all of this endless toil for so little had made the old woman bitter.

The old woman begins to mutter to herself at her work. The sound is faint, Oriental, unintelligible. She is the only one who speaks, and her jabber is meant only as a background sound.
 
NABRATOR: She had become a shrew. All day as she worked she complained to herself, waiting for the old man to come in from their shabby rice paddy—waiting to complain to him.

The old man appears stage right, hobbling along painfully but briskly. He is carrying something in his hands, but we cant quite tell what it is.

NARRATOR: Usually the old man arrived silent and remained silent all through the long evening, while his wife scolded him. But this night he was talking away excitedly as he came.

Old man gestures, hobbles excitedly.

NARRATOR: "I have a gift for you," he called, "a wonderful gift!"

"A gift?" Quickly the old woman got up from her work and went to greet him, her eyes shining with greed. "A gift! What is it?"

She meets him at the door . He turns to face the audience and at the same time opens his hands.

NARRATOR: "A sparrow! A beautiful little sparrow!" cried the old man.

The sparrow flutters free of his hands, rises lamely a moment, then falls to lie fluttering on the playboard.

NARRATOR: "But she has a broken wing. We must care for her until it is mended. How do you like my gift? Isn't she pretty? Some boys must have hit her with a stone. I found her lying broken in the fields."
 
"And it's back to the field she goes!" cries the old woman, turning her back. "You know we can't feed a bird. Why, some days there is scarcely enough rice in the house for the two of us. Back to the fields with the bird I say!"

The old man picks the bird up tenderly and follows his wife into the house. She sits at her bowl, muttering. He tends the bird in a corner.

NABRATOR: But the old man would not take the sparrow back to the fields. All that night he tended the little bird, binding its wing, feeding it drops of water squeezed from a soft little rag. But the old woman scolded and muttered and complained, heaping abuse upon her husband, upon the sparrow, upon the gods who had given her such a miserable life.

During the preceding speech the fall of night is indicated by fading the light to near darkness. At the same time the two puppets crumple very slowly to sleeping poses. When the light comes up again, they arise as if from sleep.

NARRATOR: The first thing the old man did when he arose in the morning was to see to the sparrow. The little bird was mending well under his tender care. It hopped cheerfully about and its feathers were quite glossy.

The bird sings, a clear, beautiful warbling.

NARRATOR: "Listen!" the old man cried, "listen to the beautiful song. Do you see how grateful she is for our care!"

"For your waste of time, you fool," scoffed the old woman. "What about the fields? Have you given up working to play with birds?"

Ah, yes. The old man nodded his head wearily. With one last tender look at his little sparrow, he hobbled away into the fields.

He moves slowly off stage right, the bird's song fading as he disappears. The old woman sits down to her work, muttering. The bird is still and silent in the corner.

NARRATOR: The old woman took up her discontented muttering eagerly, as some women take up their mending. The more she complained to herself, the angrier she became. What right had he to bring home this silly bird, when he could barely provide enough to feed the two of them! The softhearted old fool! It was a shame the boys hadn't killed the silly bird with their stones.

Suddenly the bird begins to sing. The old woman whirls on it angrily.

NARRATOR: "Stop it! Stop that singing, you ninny! I am no softhearted fool. You can't charm me with your song!"

But the bird continued to raise its beautiful voice, as if pleading with the old woman to love it. The old woman flew into a rage.
She scuttles over to the bird and strikes it down with her spoon, then crouches over it with her back to the audience.

NARRATOR: She bent muttering over the stricken bird. She drew a sharp knife from her belt and bent to pry the delicate yellow beak apart.

The warbling is cut off short.
 
NARRATOR: "There!" she said, "without a tongue, you will sing no more, my pretty."

She throws the bird out the door  and goes back to her table. The bird arises feebly and flutters along the ground and off right. The old woman works away, grumbling.

NARRATOR: The day passed into afternoon and afternoon into evening. And finally, when the sky was red with the dying sun, the old man hurried in from the fields, eager to see his little bird and to hear its beautiful song again.

The old man enters right, hurries across and into hut, looks frantically around for the bird.

NARRATOR: "But where is my sparrow, where is my little Suzume-San ?" he cried.

"In the fields where she belongs," the old woman replied spitefully. "I threw her out. And you needn't be listening for her song, either. No bird can sing without a tongue!"

"Oh no! You didn't, you didn't!" cried the old man. "Oh yes, I did! That bird will never sing again."

The sparrow's song is heard, distant, beautiful. The old woman staggers back, holding her hands to her ears. The old man hurries to the door .

NARRATOR: "No, no," cried the old woman. "I don't believe it. I won t listen!"

"I believe it!" cried the old man. "It is my Suzume-San ! She is calling me to hear! I'm coming, Suzume-San, I'm coming!"

He hurries out right, leaving the old woman cowering in the corner. His pace slows as he crosses the yard, moves down to face front, hobbling slowly. The old woman sinks out of sight; the scene begins to change.
NARRATOR: So the old man hobbled out into the night, leaving his wife huddled in fear. All through the long night he traveled, following the beautiful song of the sparrow. And in the morning, just as the sun was flushing the bamboo forests with fresh new color, he found himself in a strange and beautiful place, and the song of the sparrow was very near.

The old man stands in a palace courtyard stage right. The song of the sparrow rises in intensity. The Princess Suzume-San  moves slowly in from stage left, followed by her handmaiden. The song of the sparrow blends with music  and fades as the music comes up. The old man turns, amazed, and stumbles forward to bow at the feet  of the princess.

NARRATOR: The princess spoke, and her voice was more beautiful than that of any bird. "It is I, Suzume-San , the sparrow with the broken wing whom you saved from the fields/'

The old man rises, listening in amazement to her words.

NARRATOR: "I was turned into a sparrow by the spell of a wicked witch, who declared that the spell could only be broken by an act of complete and unselfish kindness. It was your kindness, old man, that freed me."

"But—but—your tongue!" cried the old man.

The Princess laughed. "You cannot tongue-cut a sparrow that does not exist, can you? Your shrew of a wife was taking her vengeance on empty air, as usual. Now come. Sit and eat, and I will dance for you."

And the old man sat on cushions of fine silk and brocade and ate of fresh fruits and rich puddings and drank the purest of rice wines, while the beautiful Suzume-San danced for him.

The old man sits on sumptuous cushions, and Suzume-San dances for him to beautiful music , while her handmaiden sits to the side, swaying gracefully and tapping her timbrel in time to the music.

NABRATOR: When she had danced for him, Suzume-San clapped her hands three times.

Sharp backstage claps match the movement of her hands. The handmaiden brings out a golden chest.

NARRATOR: "Take this as your reward," the princess told him. "And may the gods go with you, old man."
The music  rises. The princess drifts out left. The song of the sparrow is heard, then fades. The old man lifts the box  and starts out slowly right. The scene begins to change again.

NARRATOR: SO the old man took up the golden chest and started home. He was another night in traveling, for the chest was heavy. And finally he arrived at his own poor house.

He finds himself in his barren yard. The old woman is at her work and her grumbling. She rises, chattering angrily.

NARRATOR: The moment she saw him, his wife began to scold. And then she saw the box . "Gold!" she cried.

"It was given to me by a princess/' the old man explained. "You see, my Suzume-San was not really a sparrow at all—"

"Never mind, never mind, it's gold!" gloated the old woman. "This time you have really brought me a gift!"

"But it is my reward," faltered the old man.

"Nonsense, you old fool," she scolded. "It is ours. Everything is shared between us. Don't you remember the marriage vows? Now, quickly, open it up, open it up!" And without waiting for him, she impatiently rushed at the box  and tore it open!

To a din of music  the box  bursts open and goggling, grinning demons pop out. The old woman staggers back in a swoon and falls in a heap to the floor. The old man closes the box  and turns toward her uncertainly. At that moment the song of the sparrow is heard, and Suzume-San appears right, followed by her handmaiden. They move gracefully across the yard and into the hut.

NARRATOR: "Suzume-San!" cried the old man. "What has happened to her, to my wife?"

"She will be all right," replied the princess with a smile. "She has only fainted."

"But the box  of devils. Was it meant for me?"

"No, it was meant for her."

"But how did you know she would open it?"
"Perhaps I know your wife better than you do yourself, old man. At any rate, she did open it and she got her reward. Now here is yours."

The princess hands the old man an enormous pearl.

NABRATOR: "The largest pearl in the kingdom. Take it, and with it buy yourself a new farm and buy your wife a new house and a new dress. Perhaps she will change her ways then"

"Oh, thank you, thank you, Suzume-San," said the old man.

"Please," said the princess, "don't thank me. You did me a great kindness. The saying is more than 'one kindness deserves another.' It should be: 'One kindness deserves a greater/ Good-by, my kindly old man."

"Good-by, good-by," cried the old man, "good-by, my Suzume-San!"

The princess and her handmaiden move slowly off right. The song of the sparrow drifts back, then becomes music . The old man looks wonderingly at his pearl, then turns slowly to his wife.

Curtain.

66. THE SHADOW DRAGON

This fierce mythical monster is made from flat cardboard parts joined with paper  fasteners . In the case of this shadow  puppet, there are four control rods , two on the legs, one each on head and tail. The puppet could be simplified, with a single fixed rod  to hold the dragon's body against the screen, a rod  on head and tail, and the legs dangling free.

The dragon (or any other puppet) can be made to puff smoke  with the addition of a fine rubber tube running up a fixed rod  to the body and along behind the puppet to the mouth or nostrils. For a regular hand puppet, run the tubing up under the skirt  to the head. Smoke can be puffed into the tube by mouth, or, if both the puppeteer's hands are occupied, with a foot bellows. Through similar use of tubing, puppets and props  can be made to spout water and even confetti , as with the compressed air toy cannon  opposite.

One last special trick: shadow  waves  can be made of silhouette cutouts that can be shifted back and forth one behind the other to simulate the rhythm of the seas.

These can simply be two cutouts held by hand, or can be mounted  on swivels as shown. With some experimentation, they can even be animated mechanically and driven by a small electric motor.

Shadow  Puppets

Shadow  puppets have been popular for hundreds of years in China, India and Java (Indonesia). They are ideal for school, church and hospital puppetry, being cheap and easy to make and operate. For a shadow  show all you need are some cut-out  puppets , a screen and a strong light. The puppet material must be strong, but should be as thin as possible so as to cast a sharp shadow  against the screen. Use stiff cardboard, sheet zinc or black sheet plastic. Be sure to put the heads of the paper  fasteners  on the side of the puppet that will face the screen. They will not snag the material. Settings  cut from black paper  can be removable themselves, or can be fixed permanently to screens which can be changed in the frame stage. Colored figures and backgrounds  of colored plastic or colored oiled paper  can be used to good effect.

A Shadow  Stage

The screen material can be factory cotton, glazed chintz or oiled paper , stretched as tightly as possible on the frame. The screen should be set in its stand at a slight angle so that puppets can be rested against it. Use one strong light source, from above and behind, making sure that the shadows of the operator's heads are not cast on the screen. The stage can be as large as you wish, but you must have a strong enough light to cover the whole surface.

A Nativity  Shadow  Play

Shadow  puppets are especially well adapted to such tableau presentations as the Story of the Nativity. The figures suggested here are not articulated, but they can be given movable joints like those of the shadow  dragon. It is best to have two different scenes set up on separate screens that can be changed in the frame. A narrator should read the story from the New Testament. Use recorded music  or enlist the help of the Sunday School choir. Suggested in the illustration are Mary and Joseph  moving toward Bethlehem (67), the shepherds  tending their flocks (68), the Wise Men  following the Star (69), the herald angel  (70), the shepherds kneeling at the stable (71), and the Wise Men  coming forward to adore the Christ Child (72).

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