Rebekah Caputo: Visiting Professional

Rebekah Caputo - Puppeteer and Theatre Maker


What is puppetry? For anything inanimate to appear alive. 

Why puppets - they are magic - a certain animism - it relates to people who gives certain personality to things - willing to believe that it is magic, it is alive - I can be anything, I'm not restricted by my human form - I can do anything, I can swim, I can dance. Coming from a performance background, acting degree, was more theatre making - visual elements to her work. Images that were moving in front of the audience. Faulty optic - around 10 years ago - this changed her perception, with the work that they had made, they are now known as Invisible thread.

She made her puppets with her own money and materials - she did a few skitz - workshops - learnt what audiences liked and didn't - its different performing its a different energy, more of a distance when using puppets as the audience are connected to the puppet rather than you.

Early development - she used cheap materials for the puppets and used herself as the environment. She made a costume that she wore, which related to a house in which the puppet interacted with. For example pockets opened up as cupboards and her legs where it's bed.

Influences: Pickled Image, Folded Feather - Located in Bristol. They love using dark themes in their work. Emma Powell - Puppet Maker. Influenced by people watching - watching how faces form, how they move, making wrinkles. She uses herself as reference for movement - how would the puppet move etc. Influenced by Masks - goes back to rituals and magic, how they represent the face. Influenced by skeletons as her puppets are not really human, so she uses skeletons as references in how to make them up, were the joints would be to move them etc. Loves going to car boot sales and charity shops, makes up stories about each object - how worn they are, this helps her to generate ideas.

Part of Odd Doll Puppetry - She decided to make it a family show as puppetry is not as popular with an older audience and she needed to build up a reputation first. She needs to earn a living and as shadow art is popular recently thanks to Britain's Got Talent, she has been doing shadow art shows and workshops. A Quiet Ward a narrative company which is Leeds based, did a show on Rose Ville - a lack of control as the puppets would move when she performs. The importance of showing my practice - runs a night called Animate Live at the Hub, at the theatre, improvises performances using improvised objects. The uncanny, when you double take - feel weird about something, normally when a puppet or animation looks too life like. Psychological routes, that sensation is the heart of puppetry. A vital piece towards the art form. Combing objects and puppets - Different construction methods - Collaboration, when making the puppet for her MA - was collaborating with a composer, making a sound score using sounds from the puppets - going to sight specifics - ones that have flavour, texture, mouldy ect. Wants the puppet to hold this quality - Experimental stage in the process, only the foundations so far. Music is essential in puppetry, Brain automatically puts the music together with the environment, dictates what is happening - the atmosphere.

After her talk, we all did a small exercise in which we made pages of a newspaper come to life, using these as our puppets. It was really interesting through how we had to consider its form, scrunching it up, showing it breathing, considering the weight and then after these two aspects we can then focus on the story of the character. Look at what you want to animate to bring alive, consider the movement how the gentle touch or the heaviest brush affects it, how the small movements make it alive, it gives it personality. Move points of contact, how does this effect it? Make the movement feel natural, consider how it would travel, character, does it feel fragile, energetic or cautious? Think about the space in which you are in - how would it interact, in a huge space would it curl up small and stay in a certain area or would it bounce, be energetic as it races around the space? All this makes it alive it isn't just moving your puppet across the frame, it is the small movements that makes it.

For the audience to believe that it is alive, a puppet must look and move, think about it's spine as it looks at something, would it curve around it, make it less human in movement. How much are you willing to believe?

I really enjoyed this talk, it was very inspiring and even though puppetry is not the route that I want to take career wise, I learnt so much that I could apply to my own practice. Just simply the act of making characters look alive in animation is the exact same process in puppetry, both processes make something inanimate come to life. I think it would be alot of fun to attend workshops with improvising movement with puppets, it would make you think more about the puppet, consider more about how it would breathe, how it would walk and present itself when coming across other puppets, would you make it shy or confident. I think this is definitely a thought process that I want to adapt more to both animating and designing characters, I want to focus more on the little things that make the character rather than focusing on it running and jumping in the frame.