The Folding Stage. This can be made from a large cardboard box. The front is the largest piece of cardboard, which should be five to six feet tall and at least four feet wide. The sides are equally tall but perhaps only two feet wide. A hole should be cut in the front pieces, which will be your stage.
The hole should be at least four feet wide remember, you may need three people backstage, and all should fit behind. Puppets will appear in front of the curtain. This can be made by cutting a strip of cardboard that is three inches wide and six inches longer than the hole for your stage. In each end, cut one slit and fit the flat piece across the bottom of the hole with the slits holding it in place.
You can secure it with triangular shelf supports from your local hardware store. The securing pieces will prevent the stage from tilting and dropping props onto the floor. Puppeteers sit or stand behind the stage, depending on how tall they are and how tall the cardboard piece is. A folding stage can be made from a box that contained a garden bench or other piece of furniture. While harder to find, some Sunday school teachers opt for this stage because it folds up and can be stored easily.
The Table Stage. This is a puppet theatre made of a cardboard box that sits on top of a table. In Africa, in Sikasso, Mali , ritual dances and zoomorphic rod puppet shows, accompanied by a drum orchestra, are performed in portable puppet booths.
In both cases, the puppet booth is portable and walks like the animal represented while shaking its mane to the rhythm of the dance that accompanies the performance. To hide the two stagehands, a striped cotton blanket is placed on the back of the antelope and a soft mat is wrapped around their legs.
The head, carved from kapok tree wood, is carried in front by the first stagehand and is connected to the rest of the body by a multicoloured fabric. In the first puppet booth-stage tyi-wara , a slot on the back of the mythical animal allows for the handling of a small wooden puppet representing a woman crushing millet in a mortar to the rhythm of the dance.
In the second booth-stage that of the grazing antelope , moved by a rod and emerging from the head, a small character represents a farmer working with the daba , the traditional hoe. In 18th century Brazil, those performing with cape puppets titere de capote in Rio de Janeiro dressed in a large coat or wide cape which served as the puppet booth. As the puppeteer played guitar, a child enclosed in the cape in front of him would manipulate puppets made out of cardboard and fabric.
These popular street performances have disappeared. The lilek or lileki , an old tradition of popular puppets marottes in Slovenia resembling scarecrows, was in the past mostly performed at weddings and on other special occasions.
These puppets were performed on a simple bench covered by a blanket. The puppeteer would lay underneath this improvised booth and manipulate the puppets from his hidden position.
For financial reasons, they must not be heavy, the material must be well packed to avoid breakage, and the setting up and dismantling must be uncomplicated and fast. Stages for puppets operated from below are in the shape of a parallelepiped rectangle. The playboard, simulating the ground, is placed just above the head of the tallest manipulator; the other puppeteers wear high heel shoes or even buskins for shorter puppeteers.
A front curtain is stretched between the playboard and the ground and side curtains run all the way up on both sides of the booth. The stage background, which is the space between the playboard and the top of the puppet stage, can be opened or closed by a frieze that can hide top lights, battens, or even another curtain.
The architecture of the puppet theatre stage can take different forms. They can have small, curbed playboards or multiple playboards, and these can be placed at different heights. There may be openings under the playboard, or there may be side panel flaps, curtain slots for apparitions, or vertical sets with balconies and towers. The Swedish director, Michael Meschke , staged his Ubu roi King Ubu, on multiple levels that included a stage for rod puppets.
Riders were mounted on rolling carts which rotated on the ground like toy targets to be shot at. A live actor playing Ubu, all in white, walked up a step stool in front of the puppet stage, while an actor inside a costume puppet made his entrance downstage.
When the playboard represents the ground and constitutes a horizontal surface reference, puppets can place their accessories on it and the scene can be played all along it without the need for depth. As soon at the puppet backs away from it, the puppet must be elevated so that the spectator located in the room at the same level as the puppet stage does not get the impression of seeing a legless puppet.
This is a potential drawback in performance spaces with bleachers or with spectators seated in balconies — the audience can see the puppeteers all the way down to their feet. Puppet stages for puppets operated from above have the same specifications as those built for puppets operated from below. They consist of a walkway French: passerelle , a bridge , on which the puppeteers are perched at a convenient height in relation to the length of the rods and strings of their puppets.
A curtain hides and reveals the scene, which is usually made of a backdrop and side curtains in order to allow for several entry and exit points. The space must also be completely darkened.
Fold each piece in half lengthwise and run a hot iron along the folds. You should now have three feet by 6-inch lengths of cloth. Turn the top frame so that the filler pieces face up and one of the long sides hangs about 2 inches 5. Clamp the frame in place. Then find the center of the front edge of the frame and make a small pencil mark there. Find the midpoint of one of the pieces of ruffle cloth.
At the midpoint, staple the unfolded edge of the cloth to the center of the front edge of the frame, keeping the edge of the cloth flush with the top edge of the frame. At this stage, the unfolded edge of cloth should be stapled to the wood and the folded edge should hang down. Make the first pleat. Grab hold of the top edge of the cloth a few inches to the left of the midpoint. Bring that top edge back against the midpoint staple, making a loop of cloth that points out toward you.
Keeping the top edge in position, flatten the loop to the left and staple its end to the edge of the frame. The new staple should be just about an inch away from the midpoint staple. You've just made one pleat.
Make the next pleat. Grab the cloth a few inches to the left of the pleat, pull the top edge back to the staple you just placed. Fold the loop of cloth down to the left, and staple it flush to the top edge of the top frame. Working to the left, create a series of flat, folded pleats across the top of the top frame. The end result will appear just like the tops of old-fashioned curtains.
Try to keep each of the folds even, stapling every inch or so. You may also find that pleating may be an easier task with two people working together, one to fold and hold the cloth and the other to staple.
When you reach the end of the cloth, staple the end to the frame. Get another length of fabric, and keep going. Overlap the new fabric over the "ruffle" of the old fabric by an inch or so.
When you get to the corner of the top frame, turn and reclamp the frame on the work surface and turn the corner with the fabric. Continue pleating until you reach the end of the short side. Go back to the middle of the front and repeat the pleating and stapling process, working to the right, until you have completed the ruffle all the way across the front and the other short side.
Glue a long piece of ribbon along the top of the ruffle to hide the staples. Start at the end of one short side, moving across the front, and finishing on the other short side.
Cut off any excess ribbon when you are finished. Gluing, smoothing, and holding the ribbon in place may require a few extra sets of hands. The result will be a beautiful finished ruffle. Part 4. Cut the curtain fabric in half. On one of the long sides, fold over 1 inch 2. Iron it down. Then, staple it in place. Repeat this process on both of the short sides of the top frame. Then bring the other piece of fabric to the work surface, ironing and stapling using the same three folds.
Fold, iron, and staple the remaining long sides. A desk lamp or two with the adjustable swivel or gooseneck if possible can be placed to either side of the stage so that they shine directly on the front of the stage.
If just normal table lamps are used, something should be hung on the shades so that the light doesn't shine back into the eyes of the audience. Lastly, the puppeteers should wear dark clothing. Black absorbs the light while white reflects it. Some puppeteers cut the feet off of black socks and pull them over their arms before putting on the puppets. ANSWER: The crossbars that support the front and backdrop curtains may be installed at half-length to provide a stage area of about 30 inches between the swing arms.
This arrangement is often suitable for areas with less space, or for presentations given by a single puppeteer. The photo on the right shows the stage set up in this minimum configuration. We do not advise extending the crossbars beyond the standard configuration shown in all of the photos above for two reasons: 1 The crossbars may tend to bend and separate if spanning a distance greater than they were designed for, thus making the stage less stable; 2 While the curtains may be stretched to some degree along an extended crossbar, they will certainly lose their fullness which affects both their attractiveness and their ability to conceal the puppeteers.
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