This week we had a workshop about puppets and puppet-making, given by both Martin Molina and Maria Laura Velez, who are part of a puppeteering group called "Tarbol"

At first they introduced us to the history of puppets and their use throughout history. What impressed me the most about that part was to understand that puppets have been entertaining an adult audience for most of its history, and only recently has there been a change to more infantile audiences because of their didactic use. So right off the bat the introduction to puppets changed my whole perspective about the potential use of puppets, and how there is much more to them than just slapstick infantile entertainment. They have the ability to express anything, from family-oriented fun to politically and socially challenging messages, and that they have super-human capabilities.

At first I thought that these abilities were merely aesthetic, as in more pronounced body features, almost a cartoonish approach, but they go beyond that. In one of the plays they presented to us called "Santuario de Febriles Sonrisas" they made a puppet start levitating at one point, defying the laws of gravity, and it looked really poetic, like the fading away from reality and entering his own world, or a struggle between conciousness and dreams.which wouldve been really difficult to do with actors. It gives performances a completely different spectrum of tools they can use in order to get messages through. Then the other play that Martin and Maria Laura showed us was a more family-oriented one, and it included a ghost a dog and a cooking woman, all of this with hand puppets. So it is definitely useful to have puppets not only because of their aesthetic or physically defying aspects but because of their practicality, all you need is one or two actors, and small amounts of material to put on a whole performance. Yet, by making the puppets so small, they are only intended for small audiences, reducing the amount of people that can be influenced by it, but making it a more personal experience.

But the personal connection between the puppets and the audience is not due to the size of the audience, but because their ability to interact with it. For some reason it seems easier to a member of the audience to respond or communicate with a puppet than it is with a person. I still cant figure out why this is, maybe because the puppets represent only fictional characters, while actors cant hide their human condition when interpreting the character. Much like speaking directly to a character rather than to person acting as medium to the character.

The making of the puppets proved tiresome and quite frustrating at times because Martin made it look so easy, and then we tried and reproduce what he did and wound up with very different outcomes. But I guess the diversity of the results is also giving us more ideas and ways of making the faces, drifting away from the conventional and entering a realm of imagination. For example Esteban's puppet which had tentacles and at one point movable eyes, or Nicole's puppet which had round bold features and a really small mouth, which made it look very cartoonish

Why arent puppet shows more frequently directed towards adult audiences? When did this tradition stop taking place and was replaced by infantile shows? Why?