Who runs this site? Can I attend your school?

School of Puppetry is run by Naomi Guss, a sort of sub-business of Puppets in Melbourne. I created this site after seeing how popular the articles and tutorials were, and moved all that stuff from the PIM website to here. You can read about my bio at the PIM site.

I hold no relationship with Spare Parts Puppet Theatre, nor any other facility in Australia that calls themselves ‘School of Puppetry’. It’s just a coincidence…

Can I attend/join your school?

Er no. Not because I’m rude, but because the ’school’ is just this… a website. I run it from my home, there are no teaching positions (unless you want to submit some writing for publication here), no ‘real world’ classes, nothing like that. School of Puppetry just happens to be a convenient name and the domain name wasn’t purchased by anyone else.

Sorry, but everything you want to know can be learned from the comfort of your own computer. I have tried to set up ‘real world’ classes before, unsuccessfully, and at this point in time they’re too expensive to run. At least this way I can share what I’ve learned with you for very little money - and reach people from other cities and countries.

Do you know everything about puppetry?

No. The funny thing is that I am learning about it as I go, much like everyone else in the world. I’m really a novice - with 7 years of puppetry under my belt, mostly self-taught, it’s nothing in comparison with the decades worth of experience many puppeteers have. I’m not trying to pretend to be an oracle of puppetry information; I’m just interested in helping the public understand a complex and nuanced craft. Once I started posting tutorials and other articles, I realised just how little is understood by the general public, and I really enjoy being able to help beginners learn from my mistakes and experiences - even if it doesn’t stack up to the decades of puppeteering that others have.