The development of hand puppet in historical periods

Being around since the Ancient Greek till today, puppets have served different purposes in every era. First, they were the sacred effigies, with enormous phallus, of religious rituals animated for the public and respected by them; and then in the Middle Ages loosing their sexualities they had been used to impersonate the sacred characters and allegorical heroes. However, rather than serving for the authorities the puppetry yielded to the attention coming from the keen public and poured to the streets, successful at gathering crowds to the squares with indecent and rude puppet characters. These masses of people on the squares created their own national characters who became spokesmen for public spreading words about various complaints and political oppositions. By showing their provocative sides, puppets let an era for bans and punishments begin. This time, the heroes of crowds protected their existence secretly via illegal means. During the war times the puppets occupied the stages quite a lot with anti-war shows and satirical themes about the politicians. But, especially after the Second World War, these puppets were looked at as serious theatrical genre. The hand puppets that had been used in open-air shows before started to take stage in show halls like the rod puppets in operas and operettas. A lot of new technical opportunities came with this change which allowed various puppetry practices. Meanwhile, some serious work was done on the technique, style and content, as well as books on puppet theatre were published. The hand puppets usually keeping the beat with the people on street opened up to innovation. Thus, hand puppets became the first of its kind to appear on television. Parallel with the constant changes in communal life for centuries, this form of visual art has been considered being worth analyzing. The place of hand puppetry in this process has been determined and the characters that had been created were examined. It has been reflected on the applied techniques of hand puppetry, which developed on both historical and technical aspects. To conclude, having all this knowledge means mastering the hand puppetry. On the other hand, without being content with what is already known, we must feel that we should follow the recent techniques and developments in puppetry which are on constant motion.