The gullet is the throat area behind a puppet’s mouth — the dark space an audience sees when the mouth opens wide.
It is the most commonly neglected part of a puppet head
, and the fastest way to break an illusion. When a puppet opens wide on an emphatic line, the audience looks straight into it. If what is back there is bare foamFoam is the structural material most soft puppets are built ... More, a glimpse of fleeceFleece is the knit fabric used as the outer skin on most mod... More seam, or worst of all a flash of the performer’s hand, the character stops existing for that beat.
What it should be
A fabricFabric is the outer surface of a puppet — the skin, the cl... More or foam tube joining the back of the palateThe palate is the roof of a puppet's mouth — the upper hal... to the back of the jawThe jaw is the lower half of a puppet's mouth — the plate ..., closing the gap between them. Dark, matte, and continuous with the mouth lining so there is no visible transition from lip to throat.
Material
FeltFelt is a non-woven fabric made by matting fibres together u... More or fleece in the same dark colour as the mouth interior. It must stretch or fold as the mouth opens and closes without binding, so a woven fabric cut on the bias, or a knit, works better than something stiff.
Depth
Deep enough that no light reaches the performer’s hand at full open, but not so deep it restricts movement. Test it at the widest the character will ever go, not at conversational opening.
Where builders get caught out
the gullet is easy at the build stage and nearly impossible to fix once the head is skinned and assembled. It has to be planned in with the mouth plates.
The hack: open the finished mouth fully and photograph it with a flash, straight on. The camera sees into the throat far more clearly than your eye does, and anything that shows in that shot will show on stage.