Rob D'Arc
Pop Up Puppet Workshop
Rob D'Arc
Rob D’Arc is a master storyteller whose puppetry feels like it’s been forged in the fires of adventure. With decades of experience spanning performance, design, and direction, Rob has built a creative legacy filled with bold characters, whimsical worlds, and unforgettable theatrical journeys. His work blends humor, heart, and a touch of mischief — the kind of energy that makes audiences lean forward, wondering what delightful surprise will appear next. Rob’s puppets often seem to leap straight out of storybooks, carrying the charm of classic traditions and the spark of new discoveries. Whether he’s crafting a character or bringing a tale to life, Rob invites audiences into a world where imagination is the compass and every performance is a voyage. He is in his 45th year as a professional puppeteer. I Begin as an apprentice to Roger and Nin Jouglet in 1980 and founded my non profit theater, Kidstuff, in 1987. Rob has continued his work with other forms of theatrical puppet making like the marionettes for the Seattle Opera’s “Tales of Hoffman” or the 22 foot Blue Whale parade puppet for the Fremont Summer Solstice pageant, but determined to make the Pop-Up puppet accessible to a home audience he created a “Pop-Up Puppet Kit” now available on his Etsy store, Planet of the Puppets. His studio/home at Seattle’s famous Pike Place market is the factory showroom of Rob’s current creations and where he sells Pop-Up Puppets at his daystall booth since 2004.
Pop Up Puppet Workshop
Rob D’Arc did not invent the mechanism that gives the Pop-Up puppet it’s name; that honor goes to the late Duke Kraus, who shared the idea with Rob at a puppetry festival in Ohio in 1997. Rob immediately escalated the idea by adding pattern pieces, complicated it further by adding swinging arms, using paint stirrer sticks to make large puppets, attempting to ramrod these ideas into a separate branch of puppetry. To explore the practicality of the form he then created a stylized lip synch show called “3 Minute Theater.” In the summer 1999 edition of the Puppetry Journal, Rob’s article “Uncle Duke’s PopUp Puppets” kicked off the Pop-Up up revolution. Other puppeteers soon contributed modifications and alternate uses, such as classroom use, therapy and speech pathology, and working with differently abled students.