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Important “Little” Things

When putting on a puppet presentation, if you aren’t careful, it is easy to overlook some simple things that add to the professionalism of the presentation.

The first one is the appearance of the puppet’s hair. I recently judged puppetry at a teen ministry competition and just about every team had puppets with messy hair. Since few of the roles called for a puppet with wild hair, the quality of each of the presentations was reduced. When you have a key puppet making an important statement, you want people to focus on what he’s saying, not how he looks.

We have close to thirty puppets, and many of them have hair that stays in place well, but several need constant combing so we keep a brush handy backstage. You’ll discover, if you haven’t already, that combing alone often isn’t enough. You comb the puppet’s hair before the program, but when it’s time to come on stage, it’s a mess again.

To help keep the hair well groomed, after you comb it, spray it with a non-aerosol hair spray to help hold it in place. You can usually tell it’s a non-aerosol spray when it comes in a pump type dispenser. Aerosol hair sprays have chemicals in them that over time can damage the hair.

Also, try a quick combing right before you bring your puppet on stage using the puppet’s hand and not your own. Your hand has natural oils that can come off on the puppet’s hair and discolor it.

As you use the hair spray, over time it will build up on the puppet’s hair and combing won’t be a problem anymore. We don’t have to worry about the hair on several of our puppets. They’ve had enough spray on them that their hair stays in place even when taken in and out of the storage bin.

With our traveling team, one of our puppeteers had the responsibility of combing and spraying the puppet’s hair before each performance. That way we never had to worry about messy hair detracting from our message.

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