Explore five fascinating forms of puppetry—from marionettes to object theatre—and how this timeless art continues to evolve and enchant today.

These are yearning words puppet maker Geppeto utters in the 1940 Disney animated classic Pinocchio. And his wish? For his carved, wooden puppet to become a real boy. Geppeto’s yearning underscores a deeply human impulse: to see life in the lifeless. In puppetry, a figure made of fabric, wood and string can laugh, grieve, or even fall in love. Each animated gesture becomes an invitation to recognise something of ourselves in something not alive.

Puppetry is one of the oldest ways humans have explored what it means to be alive. In ancient Egypt, jointed figurines played ceremonial roles. In medieval Europe, puppets lampooned the elites and comforted the working class. In Asia, they’ve long been part of community life, rituals and rites of passage. As writer Kenneth Kwok observes, puppetry here is as much about gathering as it is about storytelling, marking milestones from life to death, from joy to mourning.

But puppetry isn’t just about tradition. Across the world and here in Singapore, artists continue to explore the expressive potential of puppets in new and surprising ways. Today’s puppetry spans old and new, the sacred and absurd, and even analogue and digital. It remains one of the most captivating forms of physical storytelling, one that is rooted in craft, yet constantly reinventing itself.

In this guide, we explore five forms of puppetry. Each form not only reveals a different technique, but also offers a unique way of seeing—and of believing.

1 | Marionettes: Comes with strings attached

Marionettes, or string puppets, are perhaps the most iconic form of puppetry. Suspended by strings from above and controlled by a puppeteer using a handheld rig, marionettes can walk, bow, tumble, and dance with uncanny grace. The term “pulling strings” comes from the influence a puppeteer wields. One of the most recognisable  marionette sequences is the “Lonely Goatherd” scene from The Sound of Music (1965), where string puppets yodel, frolic and play instruments with delightful intricacy. But marionettes are not limited to European stages.

In Asia, one traditional form of marionette puppetry is Myanmar’s yoke thé. Dating back to the 15th century, yoke thé puppets are crafted from wood and animated by up to 19 strings, which allows a single puppeteer to produce extraordinarily nuanced movements. Yoke thé was once performed exclusively in royal courts before evolving into a vehicle for public storytelling and political critique during repressive regimes.

In more recent years, Flipside audiences may recall Famous Puppet Death Scenes (2023), a macabre and whimsical puppetry performance by Canada’s Old Trout Puppet Workshop. As the title implies, the production showcases vignettes of a puppet's demise with a unique blend of dark humour and theatrical flair. In one scene, a marionette, portrayed as a frail, elderly man, experiences a dramatic and exaggerated death. His final moments are rendered with such pathos and absurdity that the audience is left oscillating between laughter and reflection. The scene exemplifies how the delicate movements of marionettes, and puppetry overall as an artform, can explore weighty themes of mortality and the human condition.

2 | Rod Puppetry: Old tricks, new sticks

Rod puppets are manipulated using slender rods attached to the limbs, body, or head, allowing for intricate, precise movement. Puppeteers are typically concealed—crouching behind or below the puppet—guiding its gestures with remarkable control. In the right hands, even a blink or subtle tilt of the head can convey tension, curiosity or heartbreak.

In Singapore, Hainanese rod puppetry is a culturally significant form once central to temple festivals and community rituals. It features 60–70 cm tall wooden puppets with expressive faces, movable eyes and mouths, and vivid costumes. Puppeteers operate the puppets from behind a waist-high stage using rods attached to the limbs, accompanied by traditional Hainanese music. Researcher Caroline Chia has extensively documented the form, highlighting its role in ritual performance and cultural transmission. One of the last remaining troupes in Singapore, San Chun Long was founded in the 1940s and continues to keep the tradition alive amid the challenges of aging practitioners and shrinking audiences.

Another form of traditional rod puppetry is bunraku. Originating in 17th-century Japan, each puppet is operated by three visible puppeteers—the principal puppeteer manipulates the head and right hand using a rod inserted into the body, while two assistants control the left hand and legs. These internal rods allow for astonishingly lifelike movement, and years of training are required for the ensemble to move in perfect synchrony. Bunraku is traditionally accompanied by sung narration (tayū) and live shamisen music, giving it a rhythmic and emotional structure.

Contemporary creators have adapted bunraku’s methods to new contexts. In Bill’s 44th, a puppet play by Andy Manjuck and Dorothy James, two puppeteers bring the character of Bill to life—every twitch and slump of the puppet expresses inner turmoil. Similarly, in Chimpanzee, presented at Flipside 2023, rod puppetry was used to portray the memory and grief of a non-verbal primate, communicating emotion without a single word.

3 | Hand Puppetry: Expression at your fingertips

Hand puppetry is one of the most widely recognised forms of the craft. Simple in design—a puppet worn over the hand like a glove—it allows for quick, dynamic expression, making it a favourite in both education and entertainment.

No one elevated the hand puppet more than Jim Henson and the creators of The Muppets. Characters like Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, and Fozzie Bear are more than just pop culture icons—they are masterclasses in puppetry performance. Through exaggerated voices, impeccable timing, and subtle gestures, these puppets convey humour, vulnerability, and even complex emotion. The brilliance of Henson’s approach lies in its immediacy: the puppeteer is directly connected to the puppet, creating a fluid extension of thought and feeling. It’s a form that feels close, spontaneous, and deeply human.

In Southeast Asia, a long-standing tradition of glove puppetry can be found in wayang potehi, which took root in the 17th century among Hokkien-speaking diasporic communities in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Performed within a small, curtained stage, potehi puppets are delicately crafted from wood and fabric, their movements precise, economical, and expressive. Puppeteers animate them using only their fingers, supported by live music and narration in dialect. Once a common sight at temple festivals and street performances, these shows often conveyed stories of filial piety, justice, and loyalty—moral tales that resonated with everyday audiences.

4 | Shadow Puppetry: Theatre in silhouette

Shadow puppetry is one of the oldest theatrical traditions in the world—where light, silhouette, and movement combine to create a striking visual language. Articulated figures, often carved from leather, are held against a backlit screen, their shadows brought to life through precise manipulation and rhythmic choreography.

In Southeast Asia, the most enduring form is wayang kulit, practised across Indonesia, Malaysia, and parts of Thailand. Stories drawn from the Hindu epics—especially the Mahabharata and Ramayana—are narrated live, accompanied by music, and often improvised by a single master puppeteer (dalang), who voices all characters while controlling the puppets and setting the pace of the performance. It is a demanding and spiritually rooted form, traditionally staged during temple festivals or rites of passage.

In Singapore, the troupe Sri Setia Pulau Singa keeps this tradition alive, performing in the Kelantanese style. They craft their own puppets from hide, intricately painted and perforated to cast detailed shadows. While the themes remain rooted in myth and morality, performances today are often adapted for contemporary settings and family audiences.

While troupes like Sri Setia Pulau Singa uphold time-honoured techniques and ritual storytelling, other artists are expanding the possibilities of shadow puppetry in bold new directions. One of the most acclaimed is Manual Cinema, a Chicago-based collective known for transforming shadow puppetry into immersive live cinema. Using overhead projectors, handmade silhouettes, live-feed video, and original music performed onstage, they create intricate “shadow films” in real time. Works like Ada/Ava and Frankenstein have toured internationally, praised for their emotional nuance and technical precision. Their approach retains the fundamental magic of shadow play—light, shape, and suggestion—while reimagining it through the lens of contemporary multimedia performance.

5 | Object Theatre: Finding meaning in the everyday

Object theatre is a form of puppetry where everyday items—rather than purpose-built puppets—are brought to life through performance. These objects are not disguised but used as they are, becoming characters or symbols through movement, rhythm and context.

In Poop! by Singapore’s The Finger Players, object theatre is used to evoke deep, primal emotions. In one scene, a simple plastic bag floats in the wind, but its skillful manipulation by a puppeteer suffuses it with melancholy and poignance. It becomes a key metaphor in the story, when a grandmother tells her granddaughter that her deceased father’s spirit lives on in the objects around her. The bag, animated with care and restraint, becomes a vessel of presence, absence, and memory. It is proof of our ability to ascribe deep emotions and meaning to the most ordinary of things.

But object theatre, at its basis, is a playful form. In A Show With Strings by South Korean artist Lee Dae Yeol, a single piece of string goes from mere prop to conjuring up fantastical adventures and exciting exploits. The string never really pretends to be anything else, but through clever choreography and timing, it invites the audience to make-believe what it could be. As writer Daniel Teo notes, this is the raison d'être of object theatre—to fire up the imagination of both performer and viewer through nothing more than play.

Finally, Andrea Salustri's Materia, performed at the Singapore International Festival of Arts in 2023, pushes object theatre to its conceptual limits. In this hypnotic solo work, Salustri manipulates sheets, beads, and fragments of polystyrene—allowing the material to ‘perform’ without disguising it as anything other than what it is. The show explores materiality as both subject and co-performer, shifting the puppeteer’s role from controller to collaborator. Materia celebrates the physical properties of everyday materials, and in doing so, reveals the quiet magic in the mundane.

Bringing Life to Form

Whether made of wood, cloth, leather, or plastic, puppets are vessels of something deeply human: our instinct to animate, to project life into form, and to tell stories through movement. Across cultures and centuries, puppetry has served as ritual, protest, play, and poetry—an artform grounded in tradition yet endlessly open to reinvention. What endures is the act of belief. When a figure tilts its head or draws breath in stillness, we don’t just see motion—we see intention. We respond not necessarily because it looks real, but because we want it to be. Like Geppetto wishing for Pinocchio to come alive, we invest the inanimate with meaning. And in that act of animation, puppetry reminds us—quietly, powerfully—what it means to feel, to imagine, and to be alive.

Experience the magic of puppetry for yourself at Flipside! Catch Bill’s 44th and A Show with Strings at Flipside 2025. Full details here.