The Stinky Cheese Man

(And Other Fairly Stupid Tales)

Credit goes to the Stan Winston School of Character Arts and their How to Build a Hand and Rod Puppet Course led by BJ Guyer available on their website.

Research

The first step of this procsess was extensive research. After conferring with my theatre director, I knew we were going for an Avanue Q /seasame street style puppet, but thats as much as I knew. I knew from the start this project would require lot's of research because nobody from our department (including me) had really any expierence with puppets on this level. My first thought was to scroll youtube in search of a free and simple tutroial, which turned out to be much harder to find than I had orginally imagined. I couldnt find any tutroials for the hand and rod puppets we were trying to create that had enough detail and information so I had to look elsewhere. After some more looking i stumbled upon The Stan Wiston School of Character Arts and found their course on hand and rod puppets. I started a seven day free tiral and watched the three part course while taking notes to the make comprehsice puppet building guides I could refer to.

Standard (hand + rod) Puppet Building Guide - Actor Resource

Simplified (One hand) Puppet Building Guide - Actor Resource

Prepping

Once I had finished my research, I began preparing as much as possible before bringing the actors into the building process. Since the goal was to have the actors help construct their own puppets, I wanted to make the process as simple and efficient as possible. While they were busy with blocking and rehearsals, I spent about a week creating patterns for the different puppet pieces, tracing them onto foam, and cutting out hundreds of individual bodies, arms, hands, and other components. Even just cutting out the foam took a surprising amount of time. I also built a wooden frame with nails and wire that the actors could use to easily shape and assemble their puppet hands. Along with the foam, I pre cut fabric and began planning and constructing costumes for the finished puppets. My hope was that by preparing all of these materials ahead of time, the actors could focus on assembling their puppets rather than spending our limited building time measuring and cutting everything themselves.

Teaching

Because of our rehearsal schedule, I only had about two full days to teach the actors how to build their puppets. I started by walking them through assembling the foam bodies and heads, then moved on to constructing and attaching the hands and arms. Since most of the actors had little to no experience with puppet building, I had to break down the process into simple steps and demonstrate each technique. By the end of the first day, we had made a lot of progress, and I was feeling pretty confident about how things were going. Unfortunately, we quickly discovered that the adhesive we were using wasn't strong enough to hold the foam together. Pieces that had seemed secure began coming apart, meaning much of our second day had to be spent rebuilding and reinforcing what we had already made. This setback meant I wasn't able to teach the actors as much of the construction process as I had originally planned. With rehearsals continuing and our deadline approaching, I had to take on much more of the building myself than I initially expected.

Constructing

After our two building days, there was still a lot of work left to do. I spent much of my time redoing and reinforcing the pieces the actors had assembled, with help from cast members whenever they weren't needed in rehearsal. One of the biggest challenges was covering the foam puppets with fabric. Since stretch fleece was too expensive, we mainly used felt, which meant the techniques from the tutorials didn't work as intended. Instead, we had to glue and stitch the fabric directly onto the foam. This was especially difficult because many of the actors had little sewing experience. Although the puppets looked a little rough at first, everything started coming together once we began decorating them. The final details helped hide imperfect stitching and gave each puppet its own personality. Despite the challenges, I was really proud of how they turned out.

Challenges/Reflection

Though this project was a lot of fun, it was also one of the most challenging jobs I've taken on. The biggest obstacle was definitely time. We were trying to construct around thirty puppets in roughly three weeks, with only about a week of preparation beforehand. Between rehearsals, teaching the actors, and completing the construction myself, there simply weren't enough hours to accomplish everything the way I had originally envisioned.

Another major challenge was finding materials and techniques that actually worked. We experimented with several different adhesives, including rubber cement, contact cement, caulk, and super glue, but most struggled to hold the foam together consistently. Eventually, we found that the Gorilla Glue brand contact cement worked the best. Unfortunately, it was also one of the most difficult options to use because it was messy, extremely sticky, and required the most ventilation which meant we couldn't work with it inside. The fabric was also tricky because we used felt instead of one way stretch polar fleece due to cost, and it made it very difficult to cover the puppets the way the tutorial instructed. We had to improvise by gluing and stitching it directly to the foam, which was more time consuming and left some pretty rough seams before the puppets were decorated.

Communication and delegation also became challenges as we got closer to the deadline. With so many puppets to finish, I had to divide tasks among the actors, many of whom had limited sewing experience. Instructions sometimes got passed from one person to another, almost like a game of telephone, and the results weren't always exactly what I had intended. One unfortunate consequence was that many of the costumes I had spent time making beforehand no longer fit properly because the puppet arms had been attached in slightly different positions than planned. We ended up making simpler felt costumes at the last minute, and only a few puppets were able to wear their originally planned costumes. Hopefully the unused costumes can be repurposed for another project so that work won't go to waste.

Overall, this was a chaotic but incredibly valuable experience. I learned a lot about puppet construction, teaching, and adapting when a plan doesn't work out. If I were to do this project again, I would definitely allow more time, test all of my adhesives and materials beforehand, and create a clearer system for teaching and delegating tasks. While the process didn't go exactly how I imagined, I'm really proud of what we accomplished. The final decorating stage especially helped bring everything together, hiding some of the imperfect stitching and transforming the foam into characters with their own personalities.

Puppet Gallery

*This picture only includes about half of the puppets made for this show*