Puppet Making for Performance: Pulling Characters from the Inside
With Madison Weinhoffer
This hands-on puppetry construction workshop invites beginners and experienced puppet makers alike to imagine, design, and build original hand-and-rod puppets from scratch. Guided step by step, participants will move through the full creative process—from dreaming up a character and exploring its personality, to design, construction, and finishing a fully performance-ready puppet. These are not ordinary puppets. This course encourages big, weird, wild, and wacky ideas, using puppetry as a way to reach inside yourself and pull out a character you’ve always wanted to bring to life. Through demonstrations, experimentation, and collaborative support, students will learn practical construction techniques while discovering how form, materials, and movement shape character and expression. At its core, this course celebrates puppetry as a powerful storytelling art form—playful, expressive, and deeply personal.
- Dates
- Mon 6 Jul, Mon 13 Jul, Mon 20 Jul, Mon 27 Jul
- Time
- 18:00–21:00
- Cost
- €160-200 (+ €5 membership fee for new members) *this includes materials for your puppet
- Attendance type
- You should attend the full course
- Class type
- Crafts, Theatre, Puppetry
- Space
- Workshop
- Desired audience
- This can be anyone! Those who have made puppets before and those who never have! People with an interest in puppetry both performing and construction!
- What should I bring?
- None at all! I will guide you every step of the way-including on how to use a sewing machine if you never have! After this course you will.
About the artist
Madison Weinhoffer is a puppeteer, theater artist, and educator whose work centers on character-driven storytelling, devised performance, and the expressive power of objects. Their practice blends puppetry, movement, and ensemble collaboration to create imaginative, emotionally resonant work that is often playful, strange, and deeply human. Madison is passionate about guiding artists of all experience levels through the process of dreaming up characters and bringing them to life through design, construction, and performance. Through teaching and performance, they foster spaces where curiosity, experimentation, and bold creative risk-taking are at the heart of the work.
Instagram: @_madwrld_ madisonweinhoffer.com
Accessibility
The solidarity spot for this course is now booked. 90mil is wheelchair accessible. Please see the yellow section below for more on accessibility.
Sliding scale
We use a sliding scale to make courses as affordable as possible. Here’s how to use it: Lower end: You don’t have a stable income. Mid range: You have a less stable financial situation and are more selective about where you spend your money. Higher end: You experience relative financial stability. Solidarity spot: You’re experiencing financial precarity and wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford to come to a workshop.