Kay Yasugi from Pupperoos recently ran a workshop on ‘Creating Puppets For Plays‘ as part of the War Horse Australia Learning Programme at the Sydney Lyric Theatre. The participants were mainly young adults from the National Youth Theatre Company. The workshop was a practical and hands-on session of designing and making a puppet for use in the theatre. It was based on techniques employed by Handspring Puppet Company (the genius behind the puppetry in War Horse) including working with cane and paper. Over 2 hours, the group produced a variety of wonderfully inventive puppets including a snake, emu, walking boots and even the Grim Reaper! Kay is very much looking forward to running more workshops and seeing what other puppet characters emerge!
The workshop was part of a two day professional development masterclass, which also included a ‘Writing for the Stage‘ workshop (learning specific techniques required when creating an imaginative piece of writing for theatre) and ‘National Theatre Puppetry‘ workshop (exploring puppetry performance techniques used in the show and devising their own improvised scenes). The sessions were inspired by a specially commissioned monologue written by celebrated children’s author Morris Gleitzman called ‘Loyal Creatures’, which gives unique insight into how Australian soldiers and horses were involved in World War One.
War Horse is currently showing in Sydney until 30th June 2013. For more information about the show, ticket bookings and to download educational resources, please visit http://warhorseonstage.com/
If your school is interested in booking an education workshop for the War Horse Australia Learning Programme, please contact Holly Limpkin at Global Creatures at holly.limpkin@global-creatures.com
