Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/414

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��Popular Science Monthly

��a musical instrument. Some girls can learn to operate the puppets in about two weeks, while in other cases it takes months to train them. The most difficult thing for a puppeteer to do is to make a puppet walk. The puppeteers are taught to walk the puppets with their eyes shut be- cause it is so very im- portant to have the puppet walk in a natural manner, that the puppeteer must accomplish this auto- matically. The feat next in difficulty for the puppeteer to learn is to make the puppets look at each other in a natural manner. The puppets can pick up objects, throw them down, and mount and dismount animals. In fact, they can do practi- cally everything a person can do. It is far - easier to make them dance than it is to make them stand still. When they are standing, they have a tendency to sway. The skillful puppeteer can prevent this, but it takes a great deal of skill to hold a puppet motionless on the stage.

The puppets have their own miniature stage with a miniature lighting system which is similar to th:it used in Broadwu}. productions, even to the colored foot- lights. In order to prevent those of the audience who are sitting near the stage from seeing the strings, a frame is arranged in front of the stage, on which the trout line is stretched verti-

���Pulliiiti the Strings '1 In; liili iiiiTiliant seated on his cushion<i enjoying a BHioke. The younK ladies above hi in are pulling the HtrinKH which make him and his fellow puppets act. The pupiK-teers arc invisible to the audience

��cally. This screen of trout line effectually conceals the movements of the strings which are attached to the puppets. In writing a play for puppets, the lines have to be specially written to accommodate their movements. There can be no short speeches as there are in plays written for living actors.

Among the com- pany of puppets are dogs, rabbits, don- keys, and horses. In one of the plays a skeleton comes on the stage. It always

amazes the audience by its acting of the supernatural. It is so constructed that it falls to pieces and pulls itself together again. This trick is possible for the simple reason that the skele- ton has hollow bones through which strings are run.

This system of man- aging marionettes is, of course, a refined version of the old time method. Pup- pet shows in them- selves are as old, almost, as acting by living persons. It will be remembered that Cervantes has an in- cident in his immortal satire, Don Quixote, in which that cele- brated and/;hivalrous nobleman achieves lasting fame by rout- ing the gang of scurrilous knaves who were abducting the fair damsel in a puppet show belonging to a strolling player, to the owner's great disgust.

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