| The word puppet is commonly associated with children since modern puppet theater is basically oriented on the children audience. This type of theater originates from ancient times. It was mentioned in the books of ancient Greeks such as Aristotle and Plato, but ancient puppet art was not described in details. Puppet dolls were also applied as attributes in various religious ceremonies long time ago. But at the present time puppets are a symbol of happiness and are applied to entertain people, both kids and adults.
In general a puppet doll is an inanimate figure of a person, animal or even some fairytale characters. The figure is animated or manipulated by puppeteer that allows to arrange performances with puppets. Puppet art is rather developed today. There are different kinds of puppets, the most popular among which are the below mentioned.
Hand puppets, or glove puppets, are the most widespread type of puppet dolls. Hand puppets are composed of a head made from different materials, such as wood, papier-mache or cardboard, and a body representing a cloth in the form of glove that is put on the puppeteer's hand. If puppeteer moves fingers, the puppet gets animated. One of the varieties of hand puppets is finger puppets. As it's understandable from their name these puppets are put on fingers. They are very small and are often used as toys for kids.
Another widespread kind of puppets is represented by marionettes. Marionette is a puppet with strings attached to the head, arms, back and knees. By means of pulling the strings puppeteer has an opportunity to manipulate the puppet and make it move. Marionettes are used both for entertainment and in professional puppet performances.
There is another interesting type of puppets named shadow puppets. A shadow puppet represents a flat figure cut out in such a way that, while using a directed source of light, it produce a shadow on a translucent screen. Shadow puppet theater was invented in Asia more than 1500 years ago. It used to enjoy great popularity in different parts of the globe. At present shadow puppet theater is very popular in Indonesia. |
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