Week #5 we are biting off more than we can chew

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I never knew that puppets where so hard to handle, I always thought that it was a very simple thing to do but now I know that it is a very complicated craft and I fear that some people won't be able to do it in the play. Last monday we had our last workshop on puppets, we got to handle the puppets a little bit and learn how to use them but it is not as easy as it looks; first it is really hard to make the puppet look alive because you need to articulate every movement it does to make it look real and most of the times when you are controlling a puppet you focus on something like the hands or feet and forget about the eyes, or focus on the eyes and forget about the feet and so on. 

The difficulty of controlling the puppets made me realize not only that puppets are no joke but that we need to really work hard on how to use the puppets with the people that will use puppets in the play, specially the little kids because it is really hard to make them focus and last monday we saw that a little thing can ruin the whole feel of the scene. 

All this took me back to last year when we did the Kabuki play, we practiced and learned most if not all of the movements of a kabuki actor in a short period of time, and that was the main reason why the play worked, if we could do this with this play and teach every actor how to "be one with the puppet" (including ourselves) we will have a great play but if we can't achieve this goal it is obvious that the play will fail because we will use a technique that we have not mastered and that will look terrible when done. Another thing that made me realize that we are maybe biting off more than we can chew is that using a puppet is exhausting and i don't know how many of us will be able to use the big puppets in the play, I say this because the puppet that I chose to use was the biggest one and it was really tiring and we were two people using the puppet and also I am a big guy so if I get easily tired while using one of the "muñecones" it will probably be worse for some of the other people using them and we may have to get the physically stronger actors to do this. 

We also faced another challenge that was that when using a puppet between two people it is harder to coordinate with them on how to use it, for example when Mateo and I had to use the big puppet it was complicated to make the body and the arms move in a synchronized way making it look very stiff at times and not real at all, but this is something that  can be fixed with more practice and it is less of an issue. Even though we had some trouble with the big puppets i feel that the puppets that used the actors legs were great, they did not look complicated to use at all and it is something that all of us can master with ease, but they do look a little bit difficult to make and that means they probably are. Overall what we need to do is practice with the puppets and everyone because that is the only way to make these puppets work, right now I feel that it is more important to master the puppeteering instead of trying to get the scenes ready because if we have the scenes but a poor use of the puppets the play won't be a good play, but the problem is that right now we don't have puppets apart from the ones we made and we need to make more soon. 

I guess that some of us will have to stay after school and make puppets so that this can work properly, but i really want to know, are we biting off more than we can chew? Is this going to work as a whole? 

P.S. Roberto I am really sorry, it was not my fault and I really didn't want this to happen but last week when i took my puppet back home my dog, Lolita, thought it was a toy and tore it apart, she is deeply sorry for this and says it wont happen again. If you give me permission to take some materials home and do it again I will do another one but dont get angry at her it was not her fault, once again she is really sorry for this and so am I. She said it was too fluffy and soft.