Stage your puppet theatre
The rewards of joy and creativity you will reap from helping children stage their puppet shows are immeasurable. Too often, however, even after you’ve assembled your puppets, a puppet theatre, and a troupe of minor actors, the missing ingredient is the script. While there are a few sources of scripts explicitly written for puppet theatre, there are a host of other reference materials for creating your puppet show scripts – some ready to use, some easy to adapt. Also Read: Kids Drawing
Stage your puppet theatre
Comedy is an excellent form of entertainment for children. You can find sources for puppet shows in existing comedy plays. Don’t hesitate to take your children to the theatre. They will see how a play unfolds, and it can give them ideas. Comedy plays’ written, and audio scripts are available in libraries, media libraries, bookstores, and on the Internet. Just find something that suits your puppet theatre, and you’re good to go.
Puppets are as versatile as your imagination. It doesn’t matter that the puppets you have don’t match the characters in the script. They can easily replace any role and even add an extra dimension to the show. Just say that the bunny puppet plays the role of “Romeo” and the duck puppet that of “Juliet,” and watch the hilarity ensue. You can even make simple modifications to the puppets, like sticking a mustache on a puppet and giving it a scar to turn it into a villain, for example.
The best way to start performing your puppet show is to use an audio script. Such as a radio show, a piece from a film or comedy series, or even a children’s story that we often have on CD at home. So the children don’t even have to read the lines but act out the dialogue.
Other sources can be recorded songs
Children’s songs, hits of the moment, musical duets, and musicals are easily usable. For example, think of a relatively simple song, like “Old MacDonald’s Has a Farm”, with multiple characters. You can let the kids sing along and have the different animal puppet characters interact.
Of course, you can always write your puppet theatre scripts. An experience that you or the children enjoyed and want to relive. Or it could be a life lesson you want to pass on – about sharing, getting along, or living together. That can be simple or complex, with as many characters as possible. If you don’t have sufficient means, get inventive.
Introduce a doll or two into your cast of characters. You can even make a puppet out of a rubber glove and a marker or make a sock puppet.
The World of Literature is another resource that can easily be adapted to simple puppet shows. Reading a story aloud while your child acts out the story with puppets is the most accessible format to use, and depending on the age of the children, you can do the conversion for them or walk them through the story.
Simplify and convert their favorite fable, fairy tale, nursery rhyme, children’s book, and even movie scenes. Just write out the dialogue, indicate which child is doing which puppet character, or let them read the book, using post-its to show who is speaking where. Printing the text with markup or color-coding of the different characters is all you need to do.
As I told you earlier, puppets are as versatile as your imagination. They can sing, dance, fly through space and make the audience laugh or cry. Puppet theatre allows children to be in an advantageous position to receive positive reinforcement by entertaining others and seeing their audience react as they explore their character voices.
