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There’s More in Your Puppet Scripts than Just Words

The last post talked about getting the best value out of your scripts. Here are three more ways to mine great stuff out of your scripts to improve the quality of your plays.

• Scripts will often give you suggestions for props, if you look for them. For instance, in the Vitamin play, the puppets talked about vitamins. That gives several prop ideas: a vitamin container the puppet could hold, large “vitamins” you could attach to a puppet’s hand, a large cardboard vitamin bottle to stand on the stage next to the puppets, smaller cardboard vitamin bottles with labels that the puppets could hold, etc.

In another play, a puppet pushes a button to try to start a car battery. You can have the puppet tap the theater, or you could add a prop. We took a small box and fastened it to a rod and then glued a knob on the top. When it came time to push the button, the puppet had an actual button to push which made the presentation more realistic.

• Scripts will give you hints on what the puppets should wear. One of our plays takes place in the arctic. While at a garage sale one day, we came across two winter hats that were perfect for the play and the puppets. We added some scarves, shook the puppets a bit to mimic shivering and it came across as much more realistic. 

Another play had a puppet magician. For him, we used a red cape and made a wand out of a wooden dowel. We didn’t have one, but a top hat would have completed the ensemble. He came across as a magician by adding a piece of clothing and a prop.

• By carefully reading the script, you can also come up with sound effects that add more realism to the play. They could be: a ringing phone, ticking clock, distant train whistle, traffic sounds, dogs barking, etc.

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