Using Puppet Arm Rods: How to Master the Art of Puppet Theater

Video Transcript

"Hi! This is Paul Louis from Puppets n’ Stuff puppets. You can find us on the worldwide web at www.puppetsnstuff.com. Okay, we are back and we are going to talk about arm rods. Now, arm rods are basically little rods that are attached to your moving mouth puppet, in most cases, which allow you to move the puppet’s arms while you are speaking. So if you are not familiar with arm rods, a good way to hold the arm rods is kind of like the way you would hold chopsticks. And a very good thing to do with these types of puppets is to keep the arms in a neutral position. A lot of people have the misconception that, just because you have arm rods on the puppet, that the arm should go flailing about or sticking up straight. Well if you do that, the rods themselves can be a distraction, and also it just does not look natural; because you do not want to have the puppet look like he is kind of like a Night of the Living Dead zombie walking around, unless of course your show calls for that. But you want to keep the arms basically at a neutral position, and sometimes you can release one arm rod and just work with just one. Maybe you can even have a second puppeteer operate the second rod for more natural movement. Okay? So keep practicing with your arm rods, and sooner or later your puppet will have some natural, natural mobility. We will be right back."