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Lighting your puppets.
Where to buy puppet supplies in Australia?

While there’s no hard and fast rules to lighting puppets, there are some good things to remember. (Please note: I’m only discussing theatre lighting, not film or TV lighting) If you haven’t designed or operated theatrical lights before, I suggest contacting your local lighting production company, hirer, or theatre technician for advice and assistance. You will be working with electrical equipment, so safety is a big factor, and it’s important to have someone trained to help you. If you’ve done it before, the following will serve as a good reminder of what things you should keep in mind when lighting for puppets. This is NOT a how to on lighting, as lighting design is quite complicated and certainly requires more learning than what you would get from a blog post (trust me, I studied lighting design for two years at university; it’s not a topic you can learn in five minutes). A list of good books on lighting design is provided at the bottom of the post.

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Not to be confused with blacklight puppets - which us neon/glow-in-the-dark paints and UV lighting - a light curtain is a way of creating a performance where the puppets are visible, but the puppeteers are not. While the UV lighting/neon paints uses similar concepts detailed here, it is not exactly the same, and there is a different post written up on that particular topic. A video example of this technique is shown at the bottom of the post.

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