"Marionette and the Actor" Mini Course a success

On Monday 24th - Wednesday 26th November, the school ran a mini course in London exploring "The Marionette and the Actor". This course was also linked with the Su4 marionette module and its theme of Futurism.

Edward Gordon Craig thought that every actor and opera singer should train using a marionette- he thought it was a way of making the artist less egoistic and to make his/her work more sincere. Under this premise, this 3 day course was designed for actors and puppeteers alike to train with marionettes. The course explored kinaesthetics, the movement and muscle memory of the artist and how this enables him/her to develop puppet action. We worked with music, marionettes and the vital principles of marionette work.

Under the influence of Futurism, we created short, dramatic scenes using stringed everyday objects. Through this exercise, we learned (among other things) the importance of giving each character enough time to be introduced to the audience; of balancing action and voice in a group piece (making sure characters don't dominate over others); and the importance of pauses.

This is a crawling exercise we did, which also involved overcoming obstacles (quite literally).


Wendy Cook led us through some movement exercises exploring different actions in our own bodies, which we then transferred to our puppets (this often involved modifying/reinterpreting our actions to better suit the marionettes' abilities). We then worked individually and in small groups to create short sequences of actions.

On the last day of the course, we invited members of the public to come and view our work. Some of the London students did a short skit demonstrating skills they had learned during the mini course, and the diploma students performed their solo pieces. This final puppet performance was also the 'final curtain' to our module. We can all say that we have worked very hard, learned a great deal, and had a lot of fun along the way!