Teaching Culture via Puppetry & Technology

Teaching Culture via Puppetry & Technology Dr. Lorie Annarella And Dr. Netiva Caftori

Marionette French word Little Mary Puppets Religious symbols Traveling troops Political formats PUPPPETRY, A LITTLE BIT OF MAGIC

Italy-pupa, meaning doll France- marionette includes strings and hand English- marionette means strings Orient and Middle east-rod and shadow puppets Japan-Bunraku, life-like puppets using 3 people Puppet Around the World

Began in Italy Puppet troops traveled all over Europe Western Puppetry

Puppeteers were accused of witchcraft and evil 16th Century Puppets

Milton—Paradise Lost Goethe-Faust Hyden-wrote musical compositions for puppetry All influenced by puppetry Operas and ballets were written for puppet theatre Arlington Heights, Chicago, IL USA Marionettentheater, Schloss Schonbrunn, Vienna, Austria Creative Arts

Pulichinelle-Paris Gulignol-Lyon Hanswurst-Austria Kasperl-Germany Punch-England Everyday occurrence Set up in small towns Kings and queens embraced puppetry Regional Puppet Characters

Burt Tilstrom—Kukla, Fran and Ollie Sherry Lewis—Lamb Chop Jim Hensen-Muppets Mr. Rogers-Daniel Tiger and Make Believe Television and Radio

Cultural heritages preserved through story Understanding and communication between cultures Can create mental pictures for the audience Culture and Storytelling

Empathy Problem solving Divergent thinking skills Spontaneity Performance Communication Risk taking Learning Through Puppetry

Basic components of literature piece Plot Setting Characterization Theme Point of view Storytelling with a Puppet

Avoids Stereotypes Depicts cultural strengths as well as the realities of real life You like Is rich in dialog Choose a Story That

Be sure the story is age appropriate Consider the story length and the audience Practice the story, perhaps in front of a mirror More Hints

Visualize the character and setting in the story you are telling. Listen to your voice. Observe pitch, projection, voice variation and diction. Do a practice session and tell your story with focused energy. More Hints

We learn through experience and experiencing, and no one teaches anyone anything. Spolin 1950

Puppetry is an art form that pushes the event of on stage action to the point of complete application of energy into the composition of character of each puppet that is being manipulated. Annarella 2005

Ember, C. R. Ember, M. (1990). Cultural Anthropology (6th ed.). Spolin Viola. (1990). Improvisation for the Theatre. Evanston, IL. Northwestern University Press. Bibliography

The Internet erases boundaries. People connect through email and the web. New technologies allow us to present old concepts in new ways. Even puppetry can be manipulated using new technology instead of hands. Culture through Technology

http://www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/BMLwalker.html This is just one example how one can control easily the movement of a robot, or puppet, make it more feminin or masculin, heavy/light, nervous/relaxed/ happy/sad something a puppeteer may need to know, but not the novice necessarily. Maybe it's a skill to be learned. yet an astute programmer has just coded such a program. Example

Other programs, not yet written, but could be, are those where one could pull on invisible strings and make the puppet move... Other programs for the future would be story-based. You tell a story and a puppet scene is created as you talk...Wouldn't that be marvellous? Ideas

Such story telling is very possible but needs lots of programming time. For today's realities, we can create a movie using pictures of puppets and some movie making programs like Flash or MS movie maker. You add sounds, talks, and timings, and make it as smooth as you desire. True, time consuming but plausible... Current realities

2D animation such as provided by Macromedia's Flash allows the puppeteer to make visually appealing moving scenes with simple or complex objects. FLASH provides helps such as "tweening" that simplify the creation of animation by reducing the number of unique "keyframes" that the artist draws. FLASH also provides for nested movie clips that permit multiple animations to exist in the same complex movie with each clip having its own time line. 2D animation

http://www.netiva.net http://www.neiu.edu/~ncaftori/FloridaTestArea/LoriePuppets.html http://www.neiu.edu/~ncaftori/FloridaTestArea/beninMovies.html 2D examples:

3D packages such as Maya, 3D Studio Max, Poser, and more allow the artist even greater capabiity with an increase in complexity and somewhat greater cost. Poser for instance focuses on drawing of 3D humanoids that are clothed, have hair, and that can appear to walk or run on the screen. 3D models can know about themselves, i.e. they can reflect light properly back to a viewer, they can allow their hair to respond to a breeze, and they can walk realistically like the human or animal that they portray. 3D animation

3D examples

Games, films, training simulations, etc., all take advantage of computer animation. New packages such as those mentioned allow even the small shop or individual to afford the software capability that in the past might have been available only to a Pixar or Disney. The result is an increased demand for university graduates who know both art and a new kind of programming that is required to make efficient use of FLASH, Poser, etc. Note

Benin

Teaching Culture via Puppetry & Technology