Now that the puppet is on the stage, imagine what a shock it would be to your audience to see a great hand coming down below the proscenium arch. To prevent this, always keep your hand, even during rehearsals, close to your control. While on the stage, every motion must have a reason behind it. Puppets cannot move aimlessly about the stage any more than real actors can. Every gesture, too, must mean something. Now the time has come to show yourselves as real artists. Your stage is your picture and though you change it with every move of your puppets, you are always making it the picture. This means that you should know what artists speak of as arrangement or composition. [Illustration: [Stage]] Let us suppose that you are sitting in the audience and saw two puppets standing like this: “Oh, how stupid,” you would say. Imagine them standing like this: [Illustration: [Stage]] [Illustration: _Upper: Marionettes from "The Adventures of Alice."_ _Lower Left: Bear and Trainer from "Men of Iron."_ _Lower Right: Marionette from "Petroushka."_ ] “How interesting.” But why interesting? The first spacing was equal, hence it was monotonous. The second was varied, therefore, more interesting. Again you are sitting in the audience looking at the picture and this is what you see: [Illustration: [Stage]] Two small figures on one side and one large figure on the other side. How satisfying! The reason is balance. You can see by these two simple illustrations how necessary it is to keep in mind not only the movements of your puppets, but the positions of all the puppets on the stage. If each puppeteer understands this and considers the relation of his puppet to every other puppet, the audience will always see an interesting picture. Equally as important as the stage picture is the conduct of your puppets when on the stage. They should all show interest when another puppet is speaking. This may be done by turning the head to listen, nodding the head to show agreement, shaking the head to show disagreement, leaning forward to show interest. In a hundred small ways a puppet can show life. The point is, there should be no dead puppets on the stage. But there is a danger here. Puppets must not divert the attention of the audience from the main character. For example, in _Men of Iron_ in the scene showing the great hall of Devlin Castle, the minstrel is singing before the king and his court. The jester, with his pranks and capers, could easily have taken too much of the attention of the audience to himself and away from the minstrel, but instead, he sat down on the floor near the minstrel and pretended to be playing a lute. He followed every gesture of the minstrel and when the minstrel finished his song, rose and bowed low before the king. The jester did likewise, to the amusement of the audience.