10 Puppet Workshops to Take in 2024
If you’re new to puppetry you might be hungry to learn more about the art form and how to become a puppeteer.
I’ll share with you the puppet workshops, online puppetry courses and puppet schools that I can recommend based on my own experience and/or people I know and trust!
Here’s the TL;DR / Choose your own adventure:
- The O’Neill National Puppetry Conference
- University of Connecticut
- The Jim Henson Foundation
- Puppeteers of America
- The Puppet Slam Network
- Chicago Puppet Festival
- TV Puppeteering + Beyond the Sock
- Sandglass Theater Puppet Intensive
- Center for Puppetry Arts
- Puppet Making & Fabrication Workshops
- Writing for Puppetry & Intro to Puppetry
The O’Neill National Puppetry Conference
The O’Neill Puppetry Conference is a week-long conference that is all about puppetry. It is puppetry, 24/7.
It is an understatement to call it an intensive. I have been to the O’Neill twice and it is intense. There is a chance you won’t do much sleeping. But in a good way.
The O’Neill offers many different tracks, including marionette building and performance, writing for puppetry, puppetry in performance, and oh so many more.
The instructors are world-class and I can’t recommend it enough. It blew the world of puppetry open for me in the best way. The campus is also beautiful.
It happens every summer at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, CT, and tuition includes room & board. Many scholarships are available.
University of Connecticut
UConn is the only university in the United States that offers Bachelor and Masters of Arts in Puppetry.
They also house the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry which hosts tours, workshops and events.
They don’t offer much in the way of one-off workshops, but if you’re really serious about puppetry it’s a good place to look.
The Jim Henson Foundation
The Jim Henson Foundation keeps an updated list of puppetry classes happening both online and in-person in the US, so it’s a great place to start!
You can also sign up for their email list, Puppet Happenings, to get updates on who is performing and where.
Puppeteers of America
You can check Puppeteers of America to see if you have a local puppetry guild that might offer workshops. Most guilds have meetings, workshops, and meet n’ greets for local puppetfolk.
If your area doesn’t have a guild of its own, you can still join most of the guilds.
Many of the guilds hold workshops via Zoom.
The strongest local US puppetry guilds are the LA Guild of Puppetry (why yes, I am a biased LA local) and the Puppetry Guild of Greater NY. San Francisco also has a very strong guild.
Puppeteers of America also heads up the National Puppetry Festival every other year, which is chock full of workshops and shows.
The Puppet Slam Network
The Puppet Slam Network is headed by Heather Henson, youngest daughter of Muppets creator Jim Henson.
Heather offers grants to people who run puppet slams in the US (and a few in Canada, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Trinidad), which are evenings of short form puppetry acts intended for adult audiences.
You can see if you have a puppet slam in your area by checking the Puppet Slam Network website, and there are lots of events and workshops being shared on the Puppet Slam Network facebook page.
The Chicago International Puppetry Festival
I haven’t attended it myself but I have only heard very good things about this annual festival in Chicago.
I have friends who help run it and ones who perform in it. It sounds very well organized.
They offer online puppetry courses year-round in things like shadow puppetry, glove puppet technique and more.
TV Puppetry & Beyond the Sock
Beyond the Sock is a puppetry performance intensive that happens at the University of North Texas every summer.
Well, it did until the pandemic. I’m not sure if it’s come back since, but it’s worth checking out.
You get to work with puppeteers from Sesame Street to learn TV puppetry performance and construction and building techniques. Pretty cool stuff.
Sandglass Theatre Puppet Intensive
A two-week intensive in puppet theater on site at the Sandglass Theatre in Putney, Vermont.
The program, as it says on the website, is for puppeteers, teachers, actors, writers, and anyone that wants to learn the art of the puppet.
What could be more beautiful than summer in Vermont?
Center for Puppetry Arts
The Center for Puppetry Arts is in Atlanta, GA and has an amazing collection of puppets from around the world. They are the home of the National Puppet Slam – a highly curated show made of the very best of US puppet slams – every other year when its hosted at Dragon Con.
They host live and online workshops that you can check out here.
Puppet Making Workshops
You’ll find some puppet making courses mixed in with the above resources, but here are some that are specific on puppet making.
Bernd Ogrodnik’s World of Puppets
These world class wooden puppet making classes are online with Icelandic puppet master Bernd Ogrodnik. I’ve only heard great things about the courses and intensives.
Puppet Soup
Puppet Soup has an extensive list of puppetry workshops in all different styles.
Stan Winston School
The Stan Winston School of Character Arts offers a good number of really interesting looking classes. Many of them revolve around creature effects and there are some more basic puppet making classes on there too.
Project Puppet
Project Puppet has some really great puppet patterns in addition to selling supplies and simple tutorials on puppet making. I have used the “glorified sock puppet” pattern many times and can recommend it!
Puppet Nerd
Puppet Nerd is a YouTube channel with a ton of really useful puppet making videos for hand puppetry. Adam Kreutlinger is a great resource in the puppet making world!
If you’re new to puppetry I’m going to guess that you came to it from Jim Henson’s work, or maybe from seeing marionettes.
Writing for Puppetry & Intro to Puppetry
These are online courses by me! Intro to Puppetry is a complete intro course for beginner puppeteers, and Writing for Puppetry is the only course on puppet writing in the entire solar system!
I also teach a few times a year with Celebration Barn.
