UNIMA — the Union Internationale de la Marionnette — is the international puppetry organisation, founded in 1929 in Prague and one of the oldest international theatre organisations in existence.
It exists to connect puppeteers across national and language borders, and it operates through national centres in dozens of countries.
Why a builder should care
UNIMA is one of the two main doors into the organised puppetry world for someone working alone in a garage. It runs and supports festivals, publishes, maintains an international encyclopedia of puppetry arts, and connects members to practitioners doing work you would otherwise never encounter — Czech marionetteA marionette is a puppet controlled from above by strings or... traditions, Indonesian wayang, Japanese bunrakuBunraku is the classical Japanese puppet theatre in which th..., contemporary object theatreObject theatre is performance in which ordinary things — a....
UNIMA-USA
is the American national centre. It publishes, administers scholarships and grants for study and travel, and connects members into the broader network. Membership is modest and it is the fastest route from hobbyist isolation to a community of working professionals.
What it isn’t
UNIMA is not a builders’ guild and it is not a trade body. It won’t teach you to skive foamFoam is the structural material most soft puppets are built ... More. What it offers is context — exposure to the enormous range of what puppetry has been and is, most of which has nothing to do with the television-style building that dominates English-language tutorials.
Alongside it,
Puppeteers of AmericaPuppeteers of America is the national puppetry organisation ... serves a similar function domestically, with a stronger festival and regional-guild emphasis. Most serious American puppeteers eventually belong to both.
The practical case
Grants, scholarships, festival access and a membership directory. If you are building toward anything beyond a hobby, these are the rooms where the work gets seen.