The Memory Project: Storytelling through visual arts, theater & puppetry

  HSC Bensonhurst Senior Center Puppet Project Blog 8 9/30/2021 Scaffolding students’ learning is an effective tool in teaching new techniques and consolidating previously taught skills. This week we began making a human headed puppet, so we reviewed crumpling paper and molding it as you would clay to form the basis of the head. Seniors referred to the sketches they made last week when building features.  We warmed up our faces by isolating eyes, mouth, nose, eyebrows and ears, wiggling, stretching, and scrunching them in different directions. Finally, we massaged our faces and heads, such a great way to get invigorated. Before deciding on the type of human head they would make, we shared a reference grid which showed the body proportions of a typical human from infancy to adult, noting that the head became smaller in proportion to the rest of the body as we age.  Our seniors took wonderful photos of their animal puppets, often with accompanying scenery and sometimes a pr...

  HSC Bensonhurst Senior Center Puppet Project Blog 7 9/23/2021 Voicing a puppet seems easy, however, to do it effectively and not strain the neck we need to learn how to breathe, from the diaphragm. We had fun making animal sounds, discovering that the language you speak can affect the animal sound you make. So Sim, our most senior student, in years only, certainly not in attitude or energy, has been busy crocheting little rabbis for her classmates for the Moon Festival. She has also given each rabbit some tiny carrots!!  We practiced how to hold the puppet using our index finger in the head, and thumb and pinky in the arms. Basic head movements were learned such as nodding in agreement and shaking the head to say “no”. Next, we incorporated the hands with a thinking gesture, taking a bow and clapping and then types of movement such as walking, swaying, and jumping. Putting it all together, we added emotions such as scared, sad, angry, happy, and surprised. When spotlighted,...

  HSC Bensonhurst Senior Center Puppet Project Blog 6 9/16/2021 It was great to be back and see our students' smiling faces. Homecrest is celebrating the Moon Festival after our class and our students have received moon cakes from the center. Delicious! We warmed up with a few more hand exercises to help with dexterity and hand eye coordination. We asked each person to share their animal puppet with the class and encouraged suggestions about what kind of character it could be, either make or female, young or old and ideas for a name. Our students finished making the basic animal puppet costume in our last session, although some went so far as to add some trimmings for homework!  Pun made a delightful yellow dog puppet with big black floppy ears and a pink tongue sticking out of its mouth. She added a big black and red striped bow tie to its costume and added lace trim around the neck and wrists. She also made a pink bunny and gave it a matching pink costume, to which she added...

  HSC Bensonhurst Senior Center Puppet Project Blog 5 9/02/2021 Warming up our fingers and wrists is important for puppeteers as these muscles are used a lot, especially when manipulating finger puppets. We started with the shakedown countdown, followed by a hand massage, then wrist stretches and rotations and finished up with finger exercises. Students were keen to display their animal heads and excited to complete the facial features. They used colored tissue paper to add features, such as inside the ears, or horns, nose, eyes, mouth, teeth etc. We emphasized the importance of checking the placement of the eyes so that the puppet, when turned to the audience, appears to be looking at them. Music played while they focused on making their animal head unique. Pun’s pink rabbit featured a large brown stripe down the center of its head, big eyes and two giant buck teeth. Ru Ping made two animal heads, a white rabbit, with a green nose and matching green inside its ears and a brown hor...