Yesterday I had my final class with Reach Out, and it was time for table-top puppets. I did slightly better than last week in that I had one more participant (making three in total, with staff helper Betty as the fourth). (All names changed to preserve anonymity) Tony came again (yay! I think I have a puppetry convert!), plus Ann from last week, and one more woman.

The plan was to make one of these puppets - the whole reason I made them in the first place was to create something we could do in this class - but unfortunately Betty hadn’t gathered the boxes, and since the organisation was to provide all the materials, I had nothing of use with me. However, I was smart enough to bring another option with me (so glad I did), which is the other puppet. Since I was bringing handouts anyway, it was nothing to copy and paste the info from my website and put it into Word. So I did. 

There was enough boxes scavaged from around the arts centre that one or two of the recycled box puppets could have been made, so I left it as a choice who would do what. Tony opted for the ‘harder’ option of doing the print-fold-cut-glue puppet, and Betty and Kate (? I forget her name… geez, I’m always terrible with names) followed suit. Ann opted to sit out for a while, as she couldn’t decide what to do. I think she found the whole thing intimidating, and she left about 20 minutes later without having started anything.

The rest of us powered through however, and despite being scary at first, I walked through each step of the pattern bit by bit. I would generally cut out part of the pattern, explain the folding, and then let them do the part whilst I cut out the next pattern so I could explain that. Working at roughly the same pace, I built the puppet with them so they could see everything come together (I found actually that explaining it whilst doing it is so much more sensible and practical than just having it written down) It worked quite well, and considering I’ve never actually seen anyone use this table-top puppet pattern before, it was nice to see other people get it without too much confusion. Tony again was a bit reticent at his building skills, but he did fine: the pattern is quite fiddly after all, but with a bit of practice he’d make perfect ones every time. In fact, once mine came together, I noticed that the arms had been attached differently and looked lopsided. 

Betty it seems takes to this stuff like a duck to water. Her sock puppet came out amazing, her shadow puppet fish looked good enough to eat (well… to play with at least ), and this time, inspired by my green version of the puppet, she made a gold version! She overlaid the pattern with some gold wrapping paper, cut it out and put the whole thing together. It was a table-top 3CPO! It was pretty awesome… unfortunately for me, I forgot my camera, so I’m going to try and track down a photo from Betty at some point. 

Kate also enjoyed it, so much so she managed to barely finish her puppet in time for a meeting. She really had fun, even though there were a couple of easily-fixed mistakes in building hers (my fault entirely, because she missed some of the explanation of the attachment of the arms and legs, and I didn’t notice her mucking it up… but we caught it in time and fixed it).

It also turns out that you need roughly 2.5-3 hours to do this puppet properly, and so I’m going to have to double-check my Courses page where this version of the puppet is on offer as a class.

I’m so disappointed that this is my last class with them. Reach Out is a great organisation to work with: the atmosphere is always relaxed and friendly, the participants (even with one!) are mostly enthusiastic and ready to get stuck in, there’s support for me as a teacher, and everyone enjoys themselves. I really want to thank Jude for initially inviting me to run the classes, and to Casey and Betty for their enthusiasm and assistance.  And fingers crossed that we can do more classes in the future! I loved every minute of it