Year 7 Drama: Trash Puppets

In Drama this term, Year 7 students have been learning about how to bring puppets to life by using voice and movement to show breath, weight and focus. Last Wednesday, 25 May, each Year 7 class participated in an incursion with ‘Trash Puppets’. At Trash Puppets, their aim is to educate adults and children alike on the concepts of sustainability with particular focus on waste reduction. They do this through creative puppet making workshops where imaginations are expanded and where play is key.

The materials used to make Trash Puppets are 100% recycled and reused. Before the day of the workshop, students were asked to bring in a bag of their own recyclables as this helps them gain a more holistic understanding of their own impact on earth and of their own part to play in sustainability. During the workshop, students were given a puppetry demonstration with some pre-made Trash Puppets by the workshop facilitators and discussed the importance of sustainability. Students were then given time to create their own puppets out of trash. They experimented with a range of puppet styles including marionettes, glove puppets and rod puppets.

They all had a wonderful time being inventive and creating characters for performance. Below are reflections from some of the Year 7 students.

Last week, a company called ‘Trash Puppets’ came to our school. We all brought some recyclables in and used those materials to make a puppet of our choice. The company’s goal is to enforce a clean, green future by teaching us different ways to use items that could supposedly be trash. They taught us about three different types of puppets; glove, string and rod. I used a dark blue ice cream box and lid, a paper bag, a makeup box and an egg carton to make a glove puppet. The most challenging part was that we couldn’t picture a certain design in your head and had to let the trash guide you into what you are making. 

Chinthya S

I really enjoyed our lesson making trash puppets. It was so interesting to see that what we thought were useless pieces of trash made into puppets. We learnt about the different types of puppets and how they are controlled. It was really fun to experiment with our puppets and be able to change/modify things that we didn’t like. It was also really fun to be looking for good pieces of rubbish to use and then discover something that you would never have thought to use. It made us all think in different ways to how we usually think and we had to think about what would make our puppets the strongest possible while being visually appealing.

Chloe B-F

On Wednesday, people from a company called ‘Trash Puppets’ came to instruct us to make a puppet out of recyclable materials. I decided to make a marionette that was a bird. My favourite part about the incursion was to see their puppets. This inspired me to make puppets in my free time. I learnt that you could use a combination of types of puppets to make one, for example, a puppet could be controlled with your hand and a rod. 

Georgia M

Kelsey Holden

Year 7 Drama teacher