Types of Marionettes

Series Summary

Marionettes are wooden puppets attached to strings and controlled by a puppeteer above them with the attached strings. The use of marionettes has been around since ancient Greece. Archimedes was known to have worked with puppets and Plato and Aristotle make reference to puppets throughout all of their works. Their use continued through Europe during the Dark and Middle Ages, and on through the Renaissance to today. Used for many different reasons, making and using marionettes is a fun and historically deep practice and art and the experts at ExpertVillage want to help continue this ancient puppeteering practice.

In this free video series, watch as freelance designer Emily DeCola teaches all about marionettes. Learn how to work the strings, the different types of marionettes, how to string a marionette, how to build and operate a marionette, and how to control the puppet's face. Get real puppet making tips and instructions in these step by step online videos.

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village. I am Emily DeCola. I am here at the Puppet Kitchen in New York City and we re going to talk about marionettes. Welcome to the puppet kitchen. This strange and incredibly crowded but wonderful room is where I and three other professional puppeteers and puppet makers spend their days building different kind of puppets for different kind of projects. But today we re here to talk about or I am here to talk with you folks about marionettes. They are a particular kind of puppet. Behind me hanging on this rack are our 1, 2,3,4,5,6,7,8 different kinds of marionettes. You?ll notice that they all have one key thing in common. Which is that there are all strung from these elaborate or simple depending on the puppet contraptions. That are hung on a bar here the strings are what define a marionette as opposed to other different kinds of puppets and just to give you another example of what else is possible this is a rod puppet. From a show which I decided earlier this year it was Ensemble Studio Theater. This puppet is operated directly by the performer and grabbing up up its head and and also it?s operated by a rod."