Scene IV is again at the fair. There are gay dances by gypsies and

nounous. Petrouchka runs in, chased by the Moor who stabs him. The people draw away and the Ballerina kneels beside him. The manager comes in, the Moor, the Ballerina, and all the people depart. The manager drags poor, lifeless Petrouchka toward the little theater. Suddenly up over the little theater appears the spirit of Petrouchka, mocking and gesticulating. The manager stands aghast.

So that you may understand how this ballet was produced, let us take the second scene and work it out together. The scene opens with a crashing chord as Petrouchka is thrown onto the stage. (No less than thirty times did the puppeteer rehearse this entrance with the music.) He lay in a motionless heap. At a few plaintive notes he lifts his head, then drops it again. To the quick notes that follow he beats the floor with his hands. As the music grows in volume, his despair increases, and he leaps to his feet and rushes wildly about the room, beating frantically upon the walls. As the music changes and becomes soft and reminiscent, Petrouchka thinks of the Ballerina and stretches out his arms, then sorrowfully drops his head. The motif for the Ballerina announces her entrance. She comes in gay and light as a bird. Petrouchka, overcome with emotion, drops on his knees before her. She continues her gay little dance and leaves as lightly as she entered. Despair again seizes Petrouchka, who dashes himself against the walls, then finally falls to the ground. The curtains close.

In a gymnasium there are certain exercises that bring all the muscles of the body into use. Likewise there are times when the whole body of a marionette must come into action. If you want a marionette to climb a wall, your audience must feel that the marionette is actually pulling himself, with effort, up and over the wall. This requires a great deal of patient practice. To make your marionette climb a wall, he must first appear to catch hold of the wall, then to draw up one knee, then to strain up as you would, then to throw an arm over the wall, then to pull his body up until he can throw a leg over the wall. If this is well done, the audience climbs the walls with the puppet.

Sometimes, puppets must appear to assist each other. For instance, when Myles was thrown on the ground by the bully, Walter Blunt, Gascoigne, his friend, got down on one knee beside him, threw his arm around his shoulders, and apparently helped him to rise.

There are certain little tricks which are very effective, such as crying, or dropping off to sleep and snoring. In the _Childhood of David Copperfield_, Mrs. Gummage frequently lifted her apron to her eyes and wept. As one corner of her apron was sewed to her hand, this was an easy thing to do. Can you see her, shoulders shaking, her apron to her eyes, sniffling, “I am a lone, lorn critter and everything goes contrary with me?”

In the illustration, page 130, you can see how a puppet may appear to toss a ball. This is the way it was done. One puppeteer held the Moor’s controller while his assistant held the end of a string attached to the ball. Through practice, these puppeteers were able to make the Moor’s hand and the ball rise at the same moment, thereby giving the impression that the Moor tossed the ball. When the Moor stopped playing with the ball, the puppeteer who held the string attached to the ball let it fall to the stage. The audience felt that the Moor was tired of playing and had tossed the ball aside.

In this same ballet, an organ grinder appeared. The handle of the organ was fastened to one of his hands. When the puppeteer pulled the hand string up and down in time with the music, it seemed to the audience that the organ was really being played. A marionette can be made to play a flute. The flute is fastened in one hand, and a string from the flute passed through the mouth of the marionette up through the top of its head to the controller. When the puppeteer pulls the flute string, the flute is raised to the mouth of the marionette.

All these effects and many others can be accomplished when you understand the manipulation of your strings. Sometimes you may wish to use birds, bees, butterflies, or flying dragons. If you keep the wings in constant motion you can make your audience believe that these winged creatures are really flying. Of course, bees and butterflies move their wings more rapidly than birds and dragons. The more you observe flying birds, the better you will be able to imitate them.

You have made the puppet look the part, now see that it acts the part. You have made your hero look like a hero, now see that he acts like a hero. You made the king look like a king. Can you make him act like a king?

The third step in your training as a puppeteer comes when you have acquired enough skill to manage your puppet. Then you are ready to join your fellow puppeteers on the bridge. At first you will probably feel that the bridge is not large enough for you alone, not to mention four or five others. Experience will show you, however, that you can do a great deal in a very small space. This means good management and practice and consideration for your fellow puppeteers.

Now that the puppet is on the stage, imagine what a shock it would be to your audience to see a great hand coming down below the proscenium arch. To prevent this, always keep your hand, even during rehearsals, close to your control.

While on the stage, every motion must have a reason behind it. Puppets cannot move aimlessly about the stage any more than real actors can. Every gesture, too, must mean something.

Now the time has come to show yourselves as real artists. Your stage is your picture and though you change it with every move of your puppets, you are always making it the picture. This means that you should know what artists speak of as arrangement or composition.

Let us suppose that you are sitting in the audience and saw two puppets standing like this: “Oh, how stupid,” you would say. Imagine them standing like this:

“How interesting.” But why interesting? The first spacing was equal, hence it was monotonous. The second was varied, therefore, more interesting. Again you are sitting in the audience looking at the picture and this is what you see:

Two small figures on one side and one large figure on the other side. How satisfying! The reason is balance. You can see by these two simple illustrations how necessary it is to keep in mind not only the movements of your puppets, but the positions of all the puppets on the stage. If each puppeteer understands this and considers the relation of his puppet to every other puppet, the audience will always see an interesting picture.

Equally as important as the stage picture is the conduct of your puppets when on the stage. They should all show interest when another puppet is speaking. This may be done by turning the head to listen, nodding the head to show agreement, shaking the head to show disagreement, leaning forward to show interest. In a hundred small ways a puppet can show life. The point is, there should be no dead puppets on the stage.

But there is a danger here. Puppets must not divert the attention of the audience from the main character. For example, in _Men of Iron_ in the scene showing the great hall of Devlin Castle, the minstrel is singing before the king and his court. The jester, with his pranks and capers, could easily have taken too much of the attention of the audience to himself and away from the minstrel, but instead, he sat down on the floor near the minstrel and pretended to be playing a lute. He followed every gesture of the minstrel and when the minstrel finished his song, rose and bowed low before the king. The jester did likewise, to the amusement of the audience.

Good puppeteering is much like good ball playing, the interest is in the ball but the ball always moves. It goes from player to player. Any player who holds the ball is the center of interest, some longer and some shorter. Your skill and cleverness can keep this sense of movement and interest in your puppets and their play. This smoothness is accomplished by your quickness in watching for the last words spoken by the speaker before you, which is called your cue; and also by your cleverness in planning ways to help out a puppeteer and his puppet who has difficult things to do.

When the bear trainer, for example, commands his bear to stand on his head, the boy who is holding the bear’s controller must have time enough to make the difficult manipulation of the strings. If the puppeteers who manage the squires make their puppets lean forward and call out in surprise to each other, “What? A trick?” “The bear can do a trick.” “Look.” “Bravo!” “Bravo!” (as the bear succeeds in standing on its head), they will be of great assistance to the bear puppeteer.

Here is an illustration of the way in which you can avoid awkward pauses. The Knave of Hearts, in the play by that name, steals some tarts and climbs out of the window. Now you can see that his puppeteer would need plenty of time in getting the knave through the window. Lady Violetta, who helps him steal the tarts, shows great excitement and cries to him to hurry, then she runs to the door, saying that she hears someone coming. Then she runs back again. She repeats this until the knave has made his escape. You can easily imagine how this clever trick excited the audience.

Getting your puppet off the stage is just as important as getting it on. Time your exits so that there is no awkward pause between the last word spoken and the exit.

You have imagined yourself sitting in the audience seeing a picture. Now can you imagine your disappointment when you cannot understand a single word the puppets say? Inexperienced puppeteers are apt to think that it is the high, loud voice that will reach the people in the last row of seats. Experienced puppeteers know that it is the clear, full, rich voice that carries. Address your words to those farthest away from you. Keep in mind that your voice must travel down and out through the proscenium arch. If your head is not lowered, your voice will strike the curtain, which will deaden it.

Sometimes it is necessary to make the voice seem to come from a distance and yet every word must be distinct. This can be done in a very simple way. Bend your arm and lift it to your face, holding your mouth inside your elbow. Now when you speak, your words seem to come from a distance. As you slowly lift your mouth from your arm, your voice seems to come nearer and nearer. In _Sigurd, the Volsung_, there is a scene where the dragon, who possesses a treasure of gold, comes, at twilight, out of the rocky crevice of a great cliff, to drink at a pool. Before he is seen, his voice is dimly heard calling, “Gold, gold, my gold, my gold.” The boy who spoke these lines used this trick so cleverly that his audience shivered as the dragon appeared.

Every person knows that the greatest charm of a voice is its naturalness. This naturalness comes to you when you let your feelings go down the strings into your puppet. Then it is that your puppet comes to life, is gay, sad, prankish, haughty, timid, bold, willful, cunning, sly, or lovable. When your puppet obeys your every feeling, you and your puppet are one.