Paperhand Puppet Intervention // Puppeteering Internship

Over the summer, I interned at Paperhand Puppet Intervention. Every year, Paperhand puts on a summer performance at the Forest Theater in Chapel Hill. This is an intensive production with original puppets, music, and a new story each year. I worked in the studio with seven other interns, two hired sewists, two studio managers, and the founders, who took on the role of creative directors and head artists for the production.

The summer was rather chaotic, there was never a time to be idle. The first month and a half was spent creating molds for puppet masks, making prototypes, sketching concepts for character creation, and lots and lots of paper mache. During late June and July, the studio was expected to be kept cleaner as it needed to also be a space for rehearsal. During rehearsals painting, final touches on masks, costuming and ornamentation were being worked on for each puppet. The final week was dedicated to sign-making, moving to the forest theater, making the shadow show, and mending costumes that ran into issues during rehearsals.

This year’s production is called “Earth and Sky: A Great Gathering for All Beings.” Over the summer, the studio built more than twenty-three entirely original giant puppets and retrofitted countless others from Paperhand’s archive. I believe there are more than one hundred puppets that go on stage during this summer’s production!

Over the course of the summer, I sculpted a few masks out of cardboard, paper mache, and worbla, dyed various costumes and raw material (like yarn and raffia), painted, built basket-forms for the internal structures of puppets, worked the sewing machine to make various costumes, sorted and stripped fabric, worked with one of the directors to sketch out ideas for plant beings, cut out shadow puppets, and even worked as a puppeteer.

Ultimately, I gained invaluable experience working on a creative team toward a shared goal– which I think is definitely something that I would want to do again. I enjoyed feeling trusted to make another artist’s vision happen, and I enjoyed learning from the skills of my peers. Puppetry and 3D art-making is definitely something I want to do as part of a creative team again. I have learned that my skills are much broader than the box I have put them in, and that it is truly rewarding to be on a team of creatives.