For puppeteers and novices alike, a puppet manipulation workshop with Jacek Zuzanski is educational and it is also deeply inspirational!

I have taken several of his adult puppet workshops and found the most recent one at Falmouth Public Library to be a most successful one. As a teacher too, I use the word- “successful”, but as a participant, the experience of the workshop was moving, and helped push me deeper into my artistic-theatrical processes.

Jacek masterfully sequenced and layered our exercises so we built one technique after the one before. His pacing was masterful, and allowed us to feel a more intermediate sense of mastery, which kept the atmosphere light and fun.

Jacek gave us our puppet, and directed the class to begin exploring its movements. We started by having them walk, as he warned not to make the movements look “too bouncy”.  He punctuated many consecutive skills by stopping and demonstrating the next movement. We started without using the control rods for the arms. This meant we focused only on our bodies and its relation to the puppet, without distracting motions. We learned about turning, by using our own bodies, rather than the puppet leading us. We learned about the important gesture of counter-action before an action, a powerful way to sharpen the motion. We listened as he demonstrated and talked about the importance of watching the eyes of the puppet to become more versed in eye contact (with the audience and others). He was articulate and offered fun anecdotes to keep discoveries playful.

At one point, he asked us to watch the other participants, (one “watcher” at a time), which was a wonderful way to observe how fellow classmates were interpreting his directives.

During the last third of the class, Jacek handed out script pages from several of his productions. We were put into pairs, each with a puppet, and asked to read the lines of the two characters on the page together. This brought a new element to the teaching, and to our understanding of performing with a puppet.

Odd though it may sound, when we were asked to begin cleaning up, there was an air of loss. Letting go of our puppets was not as simple as laying down and boxing up an inanimate object. Jacek had taught us far more than puppet manipulation.