Talk Description to Me

Episode 99 - Puppets

April 09, 2022 Christine Malec and JJ Hunt Season 4 Episode 99
Talk Description to Me
Episode 99 - Puppets
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

For some of us, puppets are lifelong friends; characters from our youth that teach, comfort, and entertain. For others, puppets are mysterious and even unsettling, represented only by strange, disorienting voices. Today, Christine works through her discomfort with the art form by asking questions about the visuals of puppets and puppeteering. How does Kermit's mouth move? Can a marionette really evoke an emotional response? And what are water puppets and shadow puppets?! Visual descriptions of one of the world's earliest theatrical traditions, today on Talk Description To Me. 

Next week we'll be releasing our 100th episode, which is a great excuse to look back on the things we've described, the discussions we've had, and the things that we've learned. If you have any thoughts to share about our first hundred episodes, please reach out! We'd love to hear from you!

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JJ Hunt:

Talk description to me with Christine Malec and JJ Hunt

Christine Malec:

Hi, I'm Christine Malec.

JJ Hunt:

And I'm JJ Hunt. This is talk description to me, where the visuals of current events and the world around us get hashed out in description rich conversations

Christine Malec:

We're going to talk about a topic that's pretty arcane to me, which is puppetry. And I didn't know until it just happened to come up socially, that puppetry is still alive and well. And it's not just for kids. And when I brought this up with JJ, he was the did the classic Oh, of course, puppetry, and he knew all of these things, you knew all of these things about puppetry. And so as we thought about the episode and talk to bit a bit through it, I was forced to confront my own my own feelings about puppetry, which are really, really mixed. And when I tried to figure it out, part of the reason is that when you grow up totally blind, which I essentially was, puppetry happens in ways that are not that obvious. So the way it might happen is a stage gets set up, you know, there's going to be something going on, and there's people, and then all of a sudden, there's this other action going on, but no one actually says, Okay, this is where the puppets start. And so if you don't see the action, there's this very disorienting, creepy, disturbing point, where you're not really sure what's going on. There's like this liminal space of where people are talking. But then they're kind of weird. And you can tell things have shifted, but you don't really know how. And if you can't see what the puppets are doing, then the whole thing just gets pretty mysterious. But it always had this murky, uncertain quality for me, because I never knew exactly when we were shifting from people to puppets and back and what the puppets were doing. So when I grew up, I tried to set puppetry aside as one of those like, vaguely nightmarish experiences of being a blind kid in a sighted world where I'm just like, Thank God that's over, because that was really confusing and a bit nightmarish. So when we revisited the idea of puppetry, I found out that it's a much more rich and vibrant tradition than I had any idea because of my limited associations. So I guess maybe, JJ, should we start with the different kinds of puppets that exist?

JJ Hunt:

Yeah, that's so fascinating. I always learned so much when you when you talk about your experiences with things like that, because puppets are I mean, they have been everywhere for a very long time. I mean, they, you know, sometimes they're more popular, sometimes they're less in some cultures they have, they are still very active puppets are part of the political context. And in the news, sharing context, in some, some society, some cultures, it is very much an active ongoing tradition. And yeah, so let's break down some of the very basic kinds of puppets, certainly the kinds of puppets that that I have seen throughout my life. So you got the basic finger puppets. So this is like a little tiny, a little tiny sock that goes over one finger that's got a, you know, a face or a character built into it, and you just wag it up and down. That's, that's a finger puppet. And then you've got the hand or glove puppet. So this is like the classic Punch and Judy kind of puppets Cookie Monster would also be considered a hand or glove puppet. This is when one hand goes inside the puppet, usually the puppet covers, you know, well down the forearm, and the hand inside either operates just the mouth, or maybe bounces the head up and down. And then the pinky and thumb operate the fingers if it's a smaller one or the hands I should say. Then there are rod puppets. So the simplest version of a rod puppet is a rod inside the body. So not a hand. That's not an very overly animated puppet. It's just basically like a drawing or a character on a stick, and you can just move them around but other rod puppets have the rods are operating the hands of the arms. So that kind of combination hand rod puppet is very common. Elmo would be an example of that. So the hand inside the body working the mouth and head and rods controlled by different puppeteers working the hands and arms. Then there are the costume or body puppets so basically, puppets you operate from the inside like Big Bird or if you go to a parade You know, we talked about the Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico, some of those puppet costumes, you know, whether it's a costume or a puppet, it's a little bit hard to say, but that's operated by an entire body. And then there are marionettes. So these are puppets controlled by strings. From above, that's a very specific kind of puppetry, other specific kinds of puppetry or shadow puppets and water puppets, lots of different ways that puppetry is still in use all around the world.

Christine Malec:

Um, I'm interested in sort of before we get really specific in talking about sort of two aspects, because puppetry is so mysterious to me still. One is where puppetry and puppets occur. And the other is something that came up just unexpectedly to me when we were talking us through earlier, which is the way that a puppet focuses the attention of the person looking at it and in a way that makes it alive can can you say some, maybe a story or two about that, because that was really illuminating to me, I had no idea how people would focus on a puppet in a way that just seemed kind of unexpected to me. Yeah.

JJ Hunt:

So puppetry has been used in all kinds of ways. Like, obviously, to entertain and you know, these days, certainly in Canada, the US and, you know, I think lots of other places too, would be to entertain kids. But it's also been a way for people to express political ideas and dif difficult social ideas. For a very long time. If you put an avatar out there, this puppet is not it's not me saying these political things. It's the puppet saying these political things, it separates a little bit. So if you want to do satire, there's been some amazing puppetry satire over the years, the Brits have done some fantastic puppetry satire. And I mean, I think I read somewhere that there's an idea that the very first kind of theatre wasn't human actors, like three to 4000 years ago, humans were using puppets to communicate ideas about culture and society, instead of themselves dressing up and making statements as actors. They instead use puppets. So it's, it's been around for ages and put in different contexts. And yeah, the way we respond to puppets as a sighted audience is really, it's quite remarkable. You know, when you put a puppet out there in the world, it focuses the audience's attention. So clearly, even if the puppeteer is visible, even if the puppeteer is not hiding, they are not, you know, behind the curtain or dressed in black, even if they're just absolutely out in public with the puppet. The sighted audience tends to still hyper focus on the puppet talking. And we and we consider those puppets quite human. We consider them to be real characters, real people and and we feel for them. It's a remarkable relationship that the audience tends to fall into with, with what is without a hand in an inanimate object.

Christine Malec:

Can you tell the story of Jim Henson on the on the late night talk show?

JJ Hunt:

So this is fascinating to me. So Jim Henson of the Muppets, one of the Muppets that he controlled was Rolf the dog. So this is the floppy eared brown stuffed animal looking dog who played the piano. And Rolf, as a puppet generally was operated with three hands, so two different puppeteers, one had their hand inside the body operating the head and mouth with the one hand, and then there would be another puppeteer, who would use both of their hands in through the arms of Rolf the dog, so that it was at Ralph's hands were puppeteers hands. And that was so that Rolf could play the piano. So it was actual hands inside, basically, free gloves for the dog. So when Jim Henson would was, you know, in the 70s and 80s, when the Muppet Show was was huge, and Jim Henson would go on talk show, sometimes he would go as Kermit he'd bring the Kermit puppet, sometimes he would go as Rolf the dog, and I remember clearly, Jim Henson being on Johnny Carson with Rolf the dog, and he had one hand in the puppet operating the mouth, but it was just him he didn't have a second puppeteer so he can only operate one other hand. So Rolf, the dog had one arm that was not in use, and it would have been really disconcerting for the audience to see this limp arm hanging down, it would have kind of broken the magic of this character. So instead, what Jim Henson did was an old puppeteers trick, he put the other arm in a sling so that the the second arm was He occupied in a way that the audience understood Oh, that arm is injured. So that's why it's not just, you know, it's not in use. But it's kind of absurd to think that the audience doesn't get the audience breaks it the breaks the magic for the audience if it's just hanging at the side, because that doesn't look real. But, uh, but a stuffed animal basically a puppet. Oh sure it's got an injured wrist or it's got a broken elbow that we will register and that makes sense to us. Like the humanity of this puppet is so clear. That made more sense than it just like being a bit of lip fabric hanging at the dogs at this puppet side is amazing. Amazing.

Christine Malec:

It's so weird to me. That's really hard to to integrate like, okay, puppets. They're just still creepy to me. But that an eye a human observer separates in that way and see something as alive. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Very strange. Um, so shall we maybe break down the different types of what you've met? We've mentioned a few. So shadow puppetry and marionettes. Where should we start with breaking some of those down?

JJ Hunt:

Well, shall we? Shall we keep going with the Muppets since we've started talking about them?

Christine Malec:

Great lead? I love the Muppets!

JJ Hunt:

We all do, right? Like, the voices are so similar, you know, when a voice changes when, you know, Jim Henson stopped doing the voice and there was a new Kermit that came along. Like it was a thing, right? Yeah, it's they've been around for I think, since the 1950s. Sesame Street started in '69. And then the Muppet Show turned into the movies in the 70s and 80s. They've been a big part of popular culture ever since. And, you know, so the Muppets and Sesame Street puppets are technically separate ensembles with Kermit being the exception, he goes back and forth. But the look of the puppets is very similar. So I'm going to describe those. In general terms. The Sesame Street characters tend to have a simpler color palette like closer to primary colors. They are more cute and furry monsters. There's more variety in the Muppet society thing as opposed to the Sesame Street side of thing. But, you know, they're each Muppet is unique, but they are all recognizable as Jim Henson Muppets. There is an identifiable style, the construction, the materials, the faces and features, and also the style of puppeteering. So these days, Muppets are made out of foam rubber and covered with different types of fake fur. And sometimes the fur looks like for like Rolf the dog, or Cookie Monster. This is like shaggy fur, but sometimes it's more felted and so it just looks like very soft skin. So Ernie and Bert Miss Piggy, those Muppets have more like a felted skin. And these are all fabric puppets soft, but not really stuffed animals. Even the bears don't look quite like teddy bears, although they do evoke the kind of soft and cuddly feeling of stuffed animals, which I'm sure adds to their appeal. But there's no wood. There's no metal in these puppets. They are their fabric, they're often dressed in clothes, so the clothes are worn. They're not just part of the build, which is kind of hilarious. It makes them look more human and more ridiculous and just it always gets a laugh like Miss Piggy wearing an evening gown. Bert in his white turtleneck and striped V neck sweater like the idea of a puppet wearing clothes is particularly funny. So a lot of the puppets and a lot of the Muppets are dressed in clothes as opposed to having their clothes be part of the build. Generally, the Muppets have kind of like a roundish head with a wedge cut out for the mouth. That's general there are different kinds of puppets within but generally roundish head with a wedge cut out of the mouth, kind of like a Pac Man. And some of these wedges are very wide like Fozzie Bear has got a big, big wide like wedge cut out of his mouth so that when he talks or laughs It's a big big, big open mouth laugh and then some are very small. So like Dr. Benson Honeydew is a stout, little round puppet. He's the long suffering colleague of Beaker and his mouth is very, very small. So when he opens his mouth, the sound that comes out as also as a squeaky smaller kind of sound and it makes sense for the size of the mouth. The noses on Muppets are sometimes they're like an attached ball like a like a red clown nose animal has one of those sometimes the noses are more kind of teardrop shaped nose or again those these kinds of foam balls are shapes that are stuck on to the to the shaped head. Or sometimes you've got like a different shape like Gonzo has got a bent tube nose, which kind of looks like a drooping faucet But then sometimes it's more like a sock puppet shapes like a sock puppet snout like Kermit. So the shape of the puppets head is really similar to the shape of the hand that's inside. So that the sock puppet handshape by the way, that's like a bent elbow, forearm straight up, bent wrists with your tightly gathered fingers pointing forward and your thumb underneath. So that's basically a, you know, the simplest version of a sock puppet. When most of us do that. And we pretend to be talking like a sock puppet, what we instinctively do is we open and close our hands. So we lift the gathered fingers, and we drop the thumb. But actually, that's not what puppets do a professional puppeteer would never do that, because the way humans talk is not by moving their upper lip and their upper jaw up and down. It's the bottom, our jaw drops and drops and drops and it lifts back up. So a proper puppet puppeteer is only going to move the thumb, not the gathered fingers, because that's looks far more natural that that mimics the way humans actually talk. With Muppets. The eyes tend to be roundish white circles or balls or half balls. Not unlike like a ping pong ball. And they will have some kind of black dot or black shape in the middle of the eye. Most of the eyes are not animated, although some of them have eyebrows that can move up and down now really expressive. I we've talked about highbrow acting, yes. Yeah. So like Muppets who can move their eyebrows. That's a much more expressive way to, you know, to get an emotion across is through the eyebrows. Many, as I've said are operated with one hand inside the moving mouth. Like Rolf like we've talked about. The bodies tend to be made that well, there's kind of two bodies in the Muppets. Some of the bodies are made out of the same kind of foam rubber material. So like Zoe, or Sam the eagle, so the torso kind of holds its shape. And the character's head and neck move more freely, but they are restricted to what an arm and a wrist can do. So the body and neck are a little bit rigid, and their arms like the puppets, arms, which are just hanging at the side and then operated on sticks, perhaps those move independently and relatively loose and free. Right. So that's a kind of distinctive movement, all of that together. But for other Muppets, the body is mostly just draped fabric. So like cookie monster or wolf, the dog, it's mostly a draped fabric shape. So as you can imagine, that's a much floppier kind of movement, right? Because anytime the puppeteer moves an arm or, or moves the head, the entire body kind of shifts and sways a little bit. So it's much floppier. And much, much cuddlier too.

Christine Malec:

it's really puzzling to me still that given the level of sophisticated animation we have access to for entertainment, that people still dig puppets. Yeah, I don't get it.

JJ Hunt:

They are. I mean, even with those So these ones are the Muppets are, these are characters we know at this point, they've been around for a long time. We know the characters, we know the voices, and they are kind of soft and cuddly. So even if we're not getting, I mean, a good puppeteer is really able to convey a lot of emotion with relatively little with not a lot of access to the facial features that a human uses to express an emotion like maybe they can raise an eyebrow, maybe they can shift the jaw back and forth. So they shift like a grinding teeth movement with a jaw going back and forth. They can also take advantage of conventions. So like there'll be like no kind of music. While music is playing often on the Muppets, the puppeteer will turn and look into the camera look directly at us. Kind of like what happens on the office or something like that. There's looking directly to camera kind of mugging for the camera. Okay, okay. And so they'll take advantage of that kind of way of expressing emotions or you can like do gestures like a puppet can slap their forehead and shake their head to express that they are frustrated or can't believe something, but it's relatively limited in terms of the like I said, Good puppeteer really can milk, a lot of emotion out of a few tools, but then you get into something like marionettes and marionettes. The way they work with. They have so many limbs and are so many joints in their limbs and sometimes even facial features that are attached to strings that you can get a ton of emotion out of something like an a marionette. That's a completely different kind of acts. expression for puppets.

Christine Malec:

Can you break down how a marionette works?

JJ Hunt:

Yes, so marionettes, they all have their limbs, their joints and like I say, even like facial features are attached to strings. And those strings are manipulated by an overhead puppeteer in all of those strings are connected to a control bar. And you know, the simplest version, the control bar might look like a T shape. But it might be really complex, there might be multiple cross bars, there might be rings for your fingers to slip into, or like these look like metal eyelets that will keep all the strings separated in places to put your fingers sometimes he looked like hydro poles where we talked about hydro poles, power transmission poles, with all the wires coming to the various ends of all the different cross bars. Sometimes they're that complicated. And in the hands of a master the specific and nuanced movements because you can not only you know with a with a hand puppet, you can move the head from side to side, and you can maybe push the arms up on the rods and that might shrug a shoulder of a hand puppet. But if you're a master puppeteer with a marionette, you might have a string attached to the top of the head to the chin to the shoulder to the elbow to the wrist to the hand. So if you want to express that shoulder shrug, the head will tip to the side the shoulder will lift in a certain way the elbow and yes a puppet to your working a rod can mimic a lot of that stuff and make like I said they can milk a lot of very simple tools. But a marionette can do things that are so specific. There are actually there are people who perform ballets using marionettes.

Christine Malec:

Ahhh! Oh my gosh!

JJ Hunt:

Because you can do so many remarkable things. I mean, the famous example of course was in Team America, the full puppet masterpiece by the guys who did South Park. The whole movie is done with marionettes. And they have the most, the raunchiest sex scene I've ever seen. And it's all done with marionettes.

Christine Malec:

Ha ha ha! Ahhhh!

JJ Hunt:

It's all done with puppets.

Christine Malec:

Ew!

JJ Hunt:

And it's so outrageous because the actions are very, very, very specific. So they can achieve movements within marionettes that are exactly like our movements. It's remarkable.

Christine Malec:

Oh my god!

JJ Hunt:

Yeah, it's really something. And their movements are like not only quite precise, but there's a lightness to them as a weightlessness to them because they're hanging from above. So their movements tend to be a little bit slow and deliberate, which often reads as kind of emotional and intense. Even passionate. Yeah, marionettes, I think are one of the most passionate kind of puppet.

Christine Malec:

Okay, those are not words I'm used to thinking of in the same sentence in any context at all.

JJ Hunt:

Ha ha!

Christine Malec:

When we were talking about this, actually, quite some time ago, we talked you raise some things that I'd never heard of, like water puppetry.

JJ Hunt:

Water puppets are very cool. This is a Vietnamese tradition. I think it grew out of the Vietnamese deltas in the north. And with water puppetry, the stage is a pool, a pool of water. And the puppets are mounted on long hollow rods or probably like traditionally would be bamboo poles. And these rods go under the water. And then up underneath the the bottom of the puppet. And there's a backdrop where the puppeteers are behind so the puppeteer is behind the backdrop and they've got a pole that goes under the water under the backdrop and then comes up underneath the puppet. And then there are strings that run down the length of the hollow rod or bamboo pole so that a puppeteer can not only move the puppet around in the pool, but they can create simple actions to by pulling on the string. So maybe the arms of the puppet can be raised or you know, they can do some dancing movements. It's amazing the puppets are, they tend to be their wooden puppets brightly painted their roundish figures. So three dimensional not flat and brightly brightly brightly painted with faces a lot of animals and they tend to have a few simple hinges so like the people will have a simple hinge at the shoulder so the arms can be raised and lowered. Maybe they beat drums, maybe they lift fishing baskets or they dance. Sometimes mostly the clothes are painted on to the puppets, but some of the elements of some of these puppets are cloth. And like I said, they're not very articulated. Their movements are simple, but they get zipped around through the water and the the stage pools are they're pretty large like they're sometimes I've seen In some that are like the area of, you know, two or three or four king sized beds, they're pretty big. And they'll put like, does a dozen puppets might come out at any given point. So one pole might have three or four dancers on the one on the one pole so they can have like rows of dancers moving about oh, yeah, it's, it's a different style. So again, you're not after specific movements, you're not trying to convey specific emotions. These tend to be more playful, simple, lots of animals represented in water puppetry, too, so water buffalo fish, and these are articulated with strips of leather. So a strip of leather or now nowadays, rubber will connect the head and body of the water buffalo, so that when you move that, that puppet, the head will will shift and tilt from side to side. And the same with the fish, the fish is kind of broken down into vertical strips. And each strip of fish each segment of fish is connected by a strip of leather or rubber. So that when you move it through the water and kind of move the rod back and forth, it makes a smooth weaving swimming motion at the surface. And so these stories that are done in in traditional Vietnamese water puppetry, it's it's a lot of stuff, of course to have to do with water and fishing. And so you'll have one of the puppets with a basket that's hanging on, on hinges between the puppets hands, trying to catch a fish, so the fish will swim around and the puppeteer will move the you know, the Fisher puppet, to like slam the basket into the water. And because the arms flop up and down, the basket weaves from side to side, and the fish always escapes in the audience laughs lots of water splashing around. It's a very playful, kind of, you know, it's charming and fun and playful. It's not tends not to be super emotional, because they just can't quite achieve that, given the, you know, given the sophistication of the puppets themselves.

Christine Malec:

I'm so struck. I don't know why for the first time, but by the fact that a puppeteer can't see the effect of what they're doing.

JJ Hunt:

Yeah, yeah. Different kinds of puppeteers have different access to what they're seeing. So if you are a marionette and you're working from above, you can see from above what's going on, but that's a that's a very complicated view, you have to have it you have to be able to translate what you're seeing from above to see how is the audience going to be taking that in from the front. If you are a water puppeteer, I don't think you've got much at all, because that backdrop tense is solid. So you're purely going on your understanding of the space and your understanding of of your angles, like what how is that if you've got a row of puppets on your pole and you move the poll to a certain angle, more of the puppets will be you know, will be exposed from certain angles. And then if you're like a Jim Henson puppeteer, if you're a Henson puppeteer, there are like... if you've got three puppets in a scene, and each puppet requires one or two or three people to operate it.

Christine Malec:

Gasp!

JJ Hunt:

It's really funny when you get a shot, you get photos of the puppeteers themselves and they're packed in-

Christine Malec:

Oh my god. It would look like a twister game.

JJ Hunt:

Exactly! They're packed in tight, and they're often sitting on little little roller seats, so like a platform with wheels.

Christine Malec:

Oh! Oh!

JJ Hunt:

So that they can move around and shuffle about as they move and sometimes they're the puppeteer is the same person who's doing the voice and sometimes it's a voice that's added in after and it's hilarious to see these puppeteers all... Twister is exactly what it looks like. And there are blooper reels, this is so ridiculous, but there are blooper reels of of the Muppets.

Christine Malec:

Ha ha!

JJ Hunt:

So if they're doing a scene and the puppeteer sneezes, they will often instinctively make their puppet sneeze too.

Christine Malec:

No!

JJ Hunt:

Oh, yeah, totally. And then the puppet will apologize. Sorry.

Christine Malec:

Ha ha ha!

JJ Hunt:

And the Muppet's mouth moves, because they're just when they're in character, they just keep going. Right?

Christine Malec:

Oh my gosh.

JJ Hunt:

It's amazing.

Christine Malec:

Oh my gosh, I can't imagine the skills required to do that a couple of times. You've mentioned emotion, which is not anything again, that I associate with puppetry. And so can you say something about the more serious iterations of puppetry?

JJ Hunt:

Oh, yeah. There's there have been some really beautiful. Being John Malkovich. Did you ever see Being John Malkovich? No, it's a wonderful movie. I gotta go back. It's really weird and wonderful. And one of the main characters in that is a puppeteer and he works with marionettes and kind of, he acts out his life and the scenes of his life through Through puppets, and they're, I mean, they're absolutely heartbreaking. He's a very lonely person, and he's struggling. And so he puts all of his energy into living out scenes of his life, if I'm remembering correctly, it's been a long time, he plays out scenes in his life that he wishes they could go by making puppets of marionettes of himself and some of the people in his life. And, again, in the same way that this kind of avatar thing, if you separate yourself and you put an avatar between yourself and the audience, in this case, there's no audience, he was just the characters doing it for themselves. But we, the audience of the movie are, you know, we get to see this puppeteer playing out versions of his life and because the marionettes can be moved with such precision, and, you know, again, very simple lowering of the head or tilting of the head can, is so expressive, which is why as describers if we're describing a TV show, if we're doing a good job, we can, hopefully, convey as much emotion by describing a specific action, as you know, as a sighted person will, will take from that scene by watching it because the action can be so precise and so effective if we pick the right one as a describer. If we pick the right action, and describe it with the right words, the full emotion is felt. And it's very much the same. You know, with puppets and with actors, if you are a puppeteer, and you can make your character you can make your puppet drop their shoulders in a certain way or lower their eyelids, if you've got a marionette that's got eyelids connected to strings, you can get all of those emotions we get the audience will feel all of those emotions. Even though this is a purely inanimate object.

Christine Malec:

I'm totally haunted by a book I read a Ridley Walker and it's I have this maybe unfortunate predilection for post apocalyptic, scary fiction. And in this book, it's 1000s of years in the future, and it's in the British Isles somewhere and puppetry has become the cultural medium. So puppeteer has traveled around and the culture is conveyed, and stories and ideas are conveyed through puppetry. And it, to me, it was disorienting and strange as all of puppetry is, but in talking with you, it's reminding me of that and thinking about how puppetry is still very much alive as a cultural medium and how you talked about Solstice and I think even the Chinese some of the Chinese New Year festivals and where puppets show up there. And so I'm, I'm interested in the places where puppetry appears in popular culture other than, say, the Muppets or something.

JJ Hunt:

Yeah, well, I mean, a lot, lots in Asia. And I happened and because I've been to Asia, I have I have more knowledge of of what's going on there. I am understanding that there's in North Africa, I think there's a fair bit of puppetry, but I don't have much personal experience with that. So shadow puppets is a is an example of a kind of puppetry that is, I mean, the shadow puppets originated in China 2000 years ago, something like that, it's actually considered the first form of animation has a shadow puppet has. So shadow puppetry has four main elements. There's a sheer screen, flat puppets, a light and a puppeteer. And it's in that order. So the sheer screen is in front, the flat puppets are pressed basically right against the screen, there's a light behind the puppets but in front of the puppeteer, so that the light shines through the puppet against the screen. But the but the puppeteer is, is out of the light. And therefore what the audience sees when they're looking at the screen is either a silhouette, or a partial silhouette with some details on the of the puppet against the screen. And that's, that's shadow puppetry, and this is a tradition that started in China but spread all through Asia. There's some there's tie shadow puppetry, Indonesian shadow puppetry, in the Chinese shadow puppetry, at least the examples I've seen, the puppets are they're thin material like a paper or punched tin or leather or fine wood. And in they have lots of patterns punched into the figures. Because when the light shines through, those patterns come across very well. And they have lots of joints like it's kind of like a flat marionette. And when the puppeteer moves, the sticks that are connected to the back of the puppet, the limbs all move but not precisely, you know, they're not looking to make an arm very slowly raise in Chinese shadow puppetry. What they tend to do is flip these puppets around. They're wild and frenetic, they spin and flip their limbs are flailing. It's kind of like a Punch and Judy energy. But it's with these these shadow puppets. And then in the Thai and Indonesian versions that I've seen, it's a little bit slower than more thoughtful, so that the characters are rendered in very much the same way. But instead of flipping your characters around, flipping the puppets around, you will slowly raise a limb to make a specific gesture and the mouth of the puppet will move up and down, not as much frenetic jumping around. But but all coming from the same tradition. Like I said, that's, that's a little snippet of my experience with these puppets, just a little snippet of what's out there in the world, different places in Japan, they've got some very specific kinds of puppetry in North Africa. And I think in Southern Africa as well, there are different kinds of puppetry that are very much part of how news is spread in the culture and in society. Still very, very, very important in lots of different parts of the world.

Christine Malec:

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Types of puppets
Muppets
Marionettes
Water puppets
Shadow puppets