To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2009 18:00:14 GMT
Subject: [Puptcrit] Costuming a Puppet


Paul Fantini--

I'm no expert at puppet costuming, but basic needle & thread is not that hard. As a kid I remember such admonitions in how-to puppet books. Select fabrics that can move, so the puppet can move. For small-scale puppets, thinner fabrics approximate the look of heavier fabrics on a human being.

For patterns, Francis Oznowicz would first experiment with muslin and straight pins. You kind of sculpt the fabric until you get the shape and design you want, then use the muslin pieces as your pattern. Frances demostrated this for a one-day costuming workshop for the Los Angeles Guild of Puppetry. She needed an uncostumed marionette for the model and borrowed an old Italian Teatro di Piccoli marionette from my collection for that purpose. I thought the results were so interesting that this muslin costume remains on the puppet to this day.

Frances did costuming for Lewis Mahlmann, Tony Urbano and many other puppeteers.

Malcolm Wilkes costumed many marionettes for the Yale Puppeteers (Turnabout Theatre_ in the 1950s here in Los Angeles. You'd be surprised at how many shortcuts she took--to save sewing time, she used straight pins in areas of the costume close to the body---I have a number of those puppets still with slightly rusting pins---you can't remove the pins easily.  

Puppet costumes are not for streetwear, but for effect---it is all about how it looks to the audience.

Most oldtime puppeteers had standard reference books on theatre costumes of different eras---Middle Ages for fairy tales, Renaisance for Shakespeare, and so on. Other books covered Asian costume types or whatever else you needed. For puppets they can be simplified.

You may want to get books on basic sewing--they do exist. For hand puppet bodies a shirt or blouse pattern usually differs from a human's pattern in that the arms are upraised, rather than hangng down. Whatever you do, just remember that the pattern you develop is for a puppet, not for a person.


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