“They tried to see how close they could get to practical effects with CGI. His experience there led him to Hollywood, where he has worked on projects with The Jim Henson Company and Nickelodeon, among others. “There has been a boom of practical effect coming back,” says a puppeteer and former pupil at the Center, Raymond Carr. Now, with Netflix reviving revolutionary works like The Dark Crystal, a revival seems afoot. Though the prevalence of computer-generated imagery (CGI) has overshadowed the historical art in today’s entertainment, practical effects and puppetry remain timeless and necessary in film, television, and theater.

” And, of course, it helped raise us and bring us joy with “Sesame Street,” “Howdy Doody,” and “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” It led us to mystified terror in Aliens and Jaws it delivered us to existential crises in Being John Malkovich it filled us with wonder in The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth and it became larger than life in the Broadway productions of “ Warhorse” and “ King Kong. Puppetry has been responsible for some of the most memorable moments in film, television, and stage performances in recent western history. This artistry has made icons of both puppets and puppeteers for centuries, worldwide. Kermit is as real as your congressman, maybe even more real.” You know it’s not alive, but yet it has the traits and qualities of life that transcend theatrical experience. To suspend what is rational, the knowledge that the puppet is not alive. “The other element is the audience’s disbelief. “The puppet is the key element,” says the Center’s artistic director, Jon Ludwig. Like dancers, they express a myriad of emotions through movement.Īll these elements are necessary to breathe life into an otherwise inanimate object. Like actors, they evoke multidimensional personalities on the stage. Like sculptors, puppeteers whittle, glue, and shape memorable characters out of everyday objects. “In puppetry, there’s a long tradition of the puppeteer doing it all - crafting their own world,” says Kristin Haverty, who works as producer with the Center. The world of puppetry - and it is a whole world - is an insulated one, partially from the perfect storm of artistic talent it takes to become a master puppeteer. I’m speaking of a curious institution, the likes of which no other city in the United States can claim: the Center for Puppetry Arts. Inside its modest doors, children and families are transported to a place where the trials and tribulations of everyday life are suspended, and childhood splendor reigns supreme, suspended by felt, foam, wood, and string. In a former school building in the heart of midtown Atlanta, couched in the shadows of two titans of the city’s art scene, SCAD Atlanta and the Woodruff Arts Center, there is a portal to a world of illusion and magic.

Atlanta puppetry theater