Hidden behind a wall built of two vertical tables lies a group of actors with their hands extended high above their heads, animating an otherwise lifeless puppet. The puppet shows were held during classes April 10, 13, and 15.

The process included establishing a character from the puppets created by the Theater Production classes, writing the show, rehearsing, and finally performing the show, according to senior Asa Troccoli.

“My favorite part of the whole process was getting to rehearse the skit with my group and finding props and making things more and more ridiculous and funny,” Troccoli said.

Senior Julian Hernandez-Suster, on the other hand, preferred creating the character of his puppet.
“I really enjoyed trying to think of a very interesting backstory and also a very unique voice that would go along with my puppet, and also creating a name and mannerisms and personality was very, very fun for me,” Hernandez-Suster said. “I was able to push my limits with my voice and also my movement and choices in ways I’ve never really done before. And I think that I created a really fun, goofy character that really translated well on stage.”

Hernandez-Suster also said this type of acting was something very new for him. “I’ve always done in-person, on-stage plays and I’ve never really had to become something small,” he said. 

He later compared puppet acting to on-stage acting. “In my experience being on stage, performing as a character is different because you feel like you’re perceived,” Hernandez-Suster said. “Although you are playing a character and you’re in character and you have motives, you still feel the eyes watching and the audience. You still feel that present moment and how people are perceiving you and seeing you. And I think in a way, it can make things more difficult for people to step out of their comfort zone when on stage. But, with the puppet acting, this was really unique because it hid the actor behind a wall and then the actor has to put his hand above [the wall] with the puppet, and that fully keeps the actor anonymous.”

When it came to choosing the puppets, the actors had to choose between puppets created by the theater production classes. “My puppet,… he wasn’t as pretty as the other puppets,” Troccoli said. “I think he’s beautiful, but he also looked like a pokemon. And so I took that idea and ran with it.”

“His name was Spencer,” Troccoli said. “He had a lisp because he had a big tongue sticking out of his mouth, and he was a scrapped Dragonair evolution, and he was very chill, but also stuck up.” A scrapped Dragonair Evolution is a hypothetical iteration of the Dragonair Evolution Pokémon that was scrapped in development.

Hernandez-Suster also chose his dog-puppet for the strange way it looked. “When I saw it, I was like, wow, that’s an ugly puppet… but then it kind of made me think,” he said. “I was like, ‘wait!’ it’s like a real dog at a pound that no one wanted because it’s ugly or something. I was like, ‘wait a second!’ I need to adopt this dog and become its father.” 

Junior Milo Soss created a puppet resembling a Fossa, which is an animal similar to a mongoose native to Madagascar. 

Soss said the process began with a sketch of the puppet, then creating a cardboard skeleton, then adding foam padding, before finally incorporating fabric and feathers. “You definitely have to think about that balance and also think about it being movable, wearable, comfortable for an actor who’s using it,” Soss said.

He also focused on the design of his puppet. “With a puppet, there’s a balance between wanting to have an actual animal that’s very clear what it is and wanting those cartoonish colors or aspects to it that make it friendlier or just more interesting to interact with,” Soss said.

His puppet was intended to be reminiscent of a Disney Villain. “I chose to make the teeth sharper, almost like shark teeth to give it that scary vibe, and very green eyes because we associate green with Disney villains,” Soss said.

“Making puppets is really hard,” Soss said. “But it was fun because it was a challenge. Drawing something in 2D or looking at photos is very different from trying to create something in 3 dimensions, which, I thought, was really cool.”

The puppet show was also written by the students, part of the process Hernandez-Suster was very involved in. Hernandez-Suster and his group wrote a segment for the show about a sun, a snake, and a metal pipe struggling to get a seat at a restaurant, proceeding to go through a series of challenges put on by a dog in order to do so. 

“The unique thing about this writing process was that we had to create an entirely new skit that’s three minutes long that incorporated four different puppets that had no relation whatsoever, that all had different voices, different backgrounds, different stories, different mannerisms, personalities, that were all created by these other people, and we had to kind of find a way to connect these differences and create something that is cohesive and interesting to watch,” Hernandez-Suster said.

“It also taught me to add a lot of those choices and methods to my future acting,” Hernandez-Suster said.