Hand Puppets & Puppet Shows - How to hold a hand puppet - Mastering the art of puppet theater

Hi! This is Paul Louis from Puppets n’ Stuff puppets. You can find us on the worldwide web at www.puppetsnstuff.com. Okay, we are back with our puppeteer techniques. First of all I want to discuss why I am dressed this way. You notice I am wearing a black shirt, black turtle neck type of thing, long sleeves. This is so that if part of my arm is shown outside the stage or when I am operating the character, it is not too noticeable. Also if you notice I am wearing a hat turned backwards, a cap turned backwards, and the reason for this, this is to keep my hair flattened down; so again my hair is not a distraction in case it pokes out while I am operating the character. I have a lot of hair, so I have to keep this pretty flat when I am working with puppets. I am going to talk to you about hand holding; and what I mean by that is the way you hold your hand when your hand is in the puppet’s head. Basically what you are going to do is, you are going to take your hand and you are going to bring it to a position like this, your four fingers closed together on the top and your thumb here. What you are going to do then is, you are going to put your hand in the puppet’s head, and it is going to be like this. So your thumb is going to be on the bottom and your four fingers on the top. Alright, so let me put my hand directly into the puppet, and I am going to put my four fingers towards the front of the puppet’s mouth, so that the fingers are nice and snug in there. So now my four fingers are exactly the way I mentioned earlier inside the puppets mouth, and I have control over the puppets mouth; opening and closing, okay. When we come back, we are going to show you the correct way to open and close the puppet’s mouth.