A lecture and slide/video/demo presenting an overview of different kinds of puppets, history, and modern performers.
(1-3 hours)

Lisa Sturz has completed three years of training as a resident artist with the Teacher Training Institute co-sponsored by the Asheville Area Arts Council and UNCA. She trained teachers in puppetry techniques while developing class plans to integrate arts and curriculum goals.  Lisa has participated in Kennedy Center's Seminar, Artists as Educators: Planning Effective Workshops for Teachers, through the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center's Education Institute.

Students learn about opaque, translucent, and transparent objects. They create cardbord shadow puppets with colored cellophane and perform a shor piece.
(3-5 days)

With a scarf as the body, participants create a simple marionette and learn the basics of stringing and balancing. Students put on a short performance to music.
(1 week)

Students design and create masks inspired by traditional cultures. Students work with cardboard, papier mache, and paint.

Students create hand puppets, write scripts, learn basic manipulation skills and put on a performance with hand puppets.
(2 weeks)

Using a video camera and monitors, students practice body posture, lip synch, eye focus, character voices, and imporovisation with puppets.
(1 day - 1 month)

Students learn to create flat patterns that translate into three-dimensional puppets. They start with simple shapes like circles, spuares, and cones and progress into more intricate sculptures.
(2 - 5 days)

Students use plastic bottles, toilet paper tubes, old dolls, broken toy parts, etc. to create rod puppets. They put on a show of their own creation.
(1 week)

Students create small "theatramas" out of cardboard boxes. They select a story and create an animated performance in a box.
(1 - 2 weeks)

Students share their dreams and describe the characters that inhabit them. We put together scripts based on their dream images. Students build papier mache hand puppets, learn basic hand puppet manipulation, practice character voices and perform their original plays.
(2 weeks)