Come connect with puppeteers from your area and around the country. Plus you can bring an unwanted puppet-themed item for the unwanted-puppet-stuff giveaway!
Description:
We can't wait to reunite with our puppetry fam & meet new people at this year's puppeteer social! This is a time for human puppeteers & those interested in the art of puppetry to socialize, talk shop, & connect. Feel free to bring any current work you want to talk about & we'll do our ever popular, unwanted-puppet-stuff giveaway!
If you've wanted to try your hand at puppetry, start here! If you have been doing puppetry for a while, the camera gives you feedback that helps your performance. Learn the basics and keep growing!
Description:
Learn how to puppeteer for the camera from professional puppeteer, Greg Ballora (Muppets, Puppet Up!, Crash & Bernstein, Team America, Ratchet, Spiderman II), You'll start your puppetry class going over basics like how to position your body for range of motion and comfort, puppet posture, eye focus and lip sync, followed by moving through the frame, positioning, working with a monitor, and finally jamming to a song (of Greg's choice, he has to maintain some control here). All skill levels welcome.
Get the puppetry party started in this welcome back seminar for the Gen Con Puppetry Program, 2023! Learn what we're doing this year, plus make your own easy-peasy puppet to take with you!
Let’s get on our feet and share stories with puppets! We’ll have lots of fun learning introductory puppetry skills and using body language to express our emotions. Everyone will have a chance to play!
Description:
This is a hands-on puppetry experience especially designed for kids, so let’s get together & show a story! Storytelling is one of life’s essentials - for the teller & the listener. In this workshop, participants will be both, learning by watching, listening, & doing! With puppets, often “show” can be more fun than “tell”! Together we will explore energy, movement & attitude to express our emotions. We will see how emotions can create body language that shows what we feel. The specific body language we discover will be transferred into a simple feather puppet to tell a story that will be shared with the group. Kristin has 25+ years of experience as a professional puppeteer for film, television & theatre (Sid the Science Kid, Frances, & Cartoonito). She's also worked as a teaching artist throughout the Los Angeles area, sharing her love of puppetry with students in the elementary grades.
In this workshop, Art Vega and Danny Montooth will teach arm rod technique for hand-and-rod style puppetry, and how to best utilize single arm-rods and dual arm rods.
Description:
Bring a puppet and don’t drop your rods! Art Vega & Danny Montooth are teaching this arm rod workshop for those curious about best practices and effective performance with arm rods. We’ll discuss grip options, strategies for clean and specific performance, and some advanced techniques. Please bring your own puppet with arm rods if you have one. (There will be a limited number of puppets available to borrow if you don’t have one). Looking forward to seeing you there!
Learn what it takes to make dynamic-looking characters in your puppet designs. Let the puppet pros show you how different shapes & colors affect your character's mood & up your design game.
Do you want to create production-quality videos and live streams for your puppet characters? We're here to help!
Description:
Have you ever wanted to stream puppetry content live, or build yourself a humble (or not-so-humble) home studio setup? The folks from the Gen Con Puppetry Program are here to help you figure out cameras, lighting, monitors, workflows, streaming software, you name it for your puppet productions! Bring questions, we've got answers!
From RPGs to Puppetry, Creating Characters that Last
Summary:
Let seasoned improviser and puppeteer Aaron Beasley lead you to creating believable characters with strong viewpoints and personalities that can carry you through scene-work or your RPG life!
Would you like to get a start making puppets or other crafty things, but don't quite have a grasp on sewing by hand? Good news! This sewing for beginners workshop is perfect for you!
Description:
You'll learn lots of different hand-stitches, & of course you'll get to practice them. You'll leave with a collection of labeled stitches in a book (that you make) & instructions on how to achieve them at home. We'll get through as many stitches as we can in our 2 hours. You'll even learn a couple of tricks for threading needles & tying knots. The instructor, Stacey Gordon, has been sewing by hand since she was much shorter than she currently stands, & she stopped growing a long, long, long time ago.
Victor Yerrid, Master Puppeteer & founding member of Jim Henson’s Puppet Up! leads this puppet improv extravaganza. Participants will perform in a series of games & exercises. Big fun, limited spots!
Description:
Improvisation is the ultimate tool to free up your acting. Nearly every puppet show ever created has benefitted from some form of improv, and the more facile your skillset, the more in-demand you will be as a performer. Good improv will help you develop characters, audition stronger, and ultimately become a better actor. PLUS, it’s waaaaay easier than learning a bunch of lines. Just ask Matin Sheen of West Wing fame. He was once quoted as saying “Man, I wish I was a puppeteer who could improvise. That would be a much better job than having to memorize all of this stupid political jargon. I’m Martin Sheen.” So, if you like puppets and don’t want to get stuck working on dialogue heavy scenes with Bradley Whitford and Allison Janney, then come learn how to improvise with puppets. It could be the best life decision you will ever make!