A hand puppet is worn directly on the hand, with the performer’s fingers and thumb driving the puppet from inside the body — no rods, no strings, nothing between impulse and movement.
It is the simplest puppet form, the fastest to learn, and the cheapest to build, which is why almost every puppeteer starts here.
Two families share the name
A moving-mouth hand puppet puts the thumb in the lower jawThe jaw is the lower half of a puppet's mouth — the plate ... and the fingers in the upper, so the hand opens and closes the mouth. A glove puppetA glove puppet is worn like a glove, with the performer's fi... puts the index finger in the head and the thumb and middle finger in the arms, with no mouth movement at all. Both are hand puppets; they perform nothing alike.
The advantage is directness
Your hand is the puppet. There is no linkage to translate intention through, no lag, no mechanism to fight. Beginners get a convincing performance out of a hand puppet faster than out of any other form.
The limitation is arms
One hand is inside the head. If the puppet needs to gesture, that requires either a second performer, arm rods, or accepting that the arms hang. This is precisely the problem the hand-and-rod design was invented to solve.
Scale is fixed by anatomy
A hand puppet can only be as big as a hand can fill. Beyond roughly forearm size, the body goes slack and the illusion collapses.
Building for it
Size the mouth plateThe mouth plate is the rigid two-part structure inside a pup... More to the performer’s hand, not the puppet. Keep the head light — there is no rod taking the weight. Leave the wrist entry generous; a tight neck cramps a hand in ten minutes.
The hack: perform to a mirror. With no mechanism in the way, everything wrong is you, and everything you fix stays fixed.