There are many different types of puppets.
Hitherto, all the types of puppets that have been considered have been three-dimensional rounded figures.
This article discusses the various types of puppets as well as historical and contemporary styles of puppet theatre around the world.
Founded in 1989 by Emilio Garcia Wehbi, Daniel Veronese, Ana Alvarado, Roman Lamas and Paula Natoli, El Periferico de Objetos is known internationally for productions in which performers interact with different types of puppets, often life-size ones.
Even less naturalistic are the hunchbacked grotesques of the European tradition, the birdlike profiles of the Indonesian shadow figures, and the intricately shaped leather cutouts of Thailand, but it is precisely among these most highly stylized types of puppets that the art reaches its highest manifestations.
In European history the marionette represents the most advanced type of puppet; it is capable of imitating almost every human or animal gesture.
In Moscow Nina Efimova carried out similar experimental productions, and these may have inspired the State Central Puppet Theatre in Moscow, directed by Sergey Obraztsov, to develop this type of puppet during the 1930s.
Another interesting, if elemental, type of puppet, the "scarecrow puppets," or lileki, of Slovenia, is constructed from two crossed sticks draped with old clothes; two of these figures are held up on either side of a bench draped with a cloth, under which the manipulator lies.
