Matthew Stanley

DRA-111-4101
January 20, 2016
Puppets and masks can help animate a story. Human actors tend to re-enact human
emotion whereas puppets can re-create these emotions while adding uniqueness to the story. I
love watching how puppets animate and come to life to tell a story. I do believe it takes humans
to do more complex scenes, but puppets make many stories come alive in a way that humans
cant in my opinion.
Most children adore puppets. Puppets can be used to teach children about safety and how
to treat one another. Children can use puppets to express their feelings. From what I have seen,
puppets seem to be able to communicate emotions as well as action. I believe creating complex
situations such as mystery scenes would be hard to do using puppets.
When I saw the War Horse, it made me realize the complexity of how puppets can be
mastered. It made me want to look at the puppeteers preforming to see how the puppet was being
mastered. My attention to the people inside controlling the puppet to bring it to life kept me
involved. The Bunraku puppetry was strange to me since I could see the puppeteers. I prefer for
the puppeteers to be disguised within the puppet or not be seen at all.
I know the Bunraku puppet did not seem as alive as the War Horse to me. I could see the
breathing in the War Horse and felt it was alive even though I could see the puppeteers. I think
not being able to see the Bunraku puppet as being alive is because of the way the puppeteers
were fully seen doing the actions.