Toolkit: Puppet Making

In this toolkit I am going to show you how to make cheap and simple Bunraku puppets from fabric or brown wrapping paper. The great thing about these puppets are that they take three people to operate, so with a little work, you can make enough to use with a whole class at once. If they are for a performance they are going to need to be more complex.

I have been using this style of puppet for a long time in workshops and I have always found them to be durable and good fun to work with. For a long time puppetry in the UK was considered the domain of children, but using these puppets you can explore creating truthful puppet characters that have a serious dramatic purpose. You can have a scheme of work that lasts half a term and builds towards a performance.

Things you will need for this:

• Calico fabric (one metre per puppet)
• Sewing machine
• Soft toy stuffing
• Thread
• Scissors
• Thin card
• Brown parcel paper
• Gaffer tape

For this puppet I got all my fabric materials from Hobbycraft.