violence and healthy life education

http://www.mendezfoundation.org/home.php, this website in general has dedicated itself to helping people teach kids about violence and healthy life choices, it sells several puppets to aid in this proccess, to see one follow the link below.
http://www.mendezfoundation.org/programs/item.php?pid=PR1020

another one i've found for children was http://pages.lindberghschools.ws/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectiondetailid=5116&sc_id=1121092060 which takes place at a school to help children learn to read, write and get over fears of coming to school


As for puppets aimed at adults the Grandan Puppets (http://www.grandanpuppets.com/) is one example which seems to be  theater that carters for an older audience.

the making of mischief

i guess this would go under shadow puppets...anyway its awesome

http://www.todaysbigthing.com/2011/02/18

Just follow the link above, its pretty epic

violence

                Prelude to Faust  is one of the greatest puppet shows I have ever seen, and retelling the tragic tale of Faust  cannot be done without a the use of violence. Now it has been a few years since I saw this, so a few of the examples are going to be fuzzy at best, so bare with me. The show is a retelling of Faust and his dealings with the devils that he has conjured up. The seven deadly sins come to pay him a visit including Wrath and Lust, two of the subjects that we are dealing with in class right now. The main actor is a live person stuffed on a puppet set and is often forced through little nooks and crannies to communicate with the puppets who often poke and jab at him. Most of the violence is fairly slapstick with beating over the head or jabbing of the eyes, not to mention some biting and humping. Although there are some comical bits the puppets do serve as an excellent medium to display these ugly, horrible little devils plaguing Faust. As mentioned before in class puppets generally symbolize an idea, and within this play I can honestly say I would never want to conjure up these little pests. They can poke, jab and taunt all they want but as the play progresses it becomes less and less funny and more serious and scary when we realize these little demons are really just there to help drag him to hell. Humans may have been able to do this, but the puppets movements, looks and the ability to poke and pester far out shines what a real actor would be able to do.

The Big Plan

My plan for my puppetry final is to have a photo-journal of the process of how I made the puppet, the supplies I got and any details during the building phase that I think are interesting or necessary to show. I would also like to try to learn how to use the puppet and put on  a small skit.

characters

Im gonna be forward and say im not quite sure if this is going to answer the question or not, but here we go anyways. My favorite characters from chapter four were the puppets that represented gods and demigods. i thought it was cool when the book mentioned a play where there were huge gods, twelve foot tall demigods, humans and small animal puppets all on the same stage. Pleanty of movies come to mind where we see towning god like beings, but i think that this would blow the socks off of any cg effect due to the fact that its real and you can almost feel the proportions rather than just go with it when its on the big screen.

3 examples

The first example that comes to mind would be Ralph Lee's influences on the New York Village Parade, which bares loads of similarities to dia de los muertos. In this festival families remember their lost loved ones by celebrating the dead with candied skulls, parades, floats music and puppets in the shape of skeletons and ghosts. The next would be the New years festival which featured many large puppets in the form of snakes, floating fish, long whisping flags and big humans. This has many tie ins with the chinese new years where large dragon, snake and other puppets are paraded through the street in celebration. The last would be the amount of puppiteers that have had their styles passed down to them from masters form all over the world including spain china and germany, and the many world festivals like the formentioned.