Like finger puppets, the small size and easy manipulation of hand puppets make traveling around with a one-person puppet show pretty easy. Rod puppets are a lot like hand or glove puppets, with a hollow body and no mouth movement. But instead of fingers in the head and arms, there are wooden or metal rods. This allows them to be a little bit larger, and to move in more ways. It also makes them somewhat harder to work.
Rod puppets are very common in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Vietnam.
The puppets are attached to long bamboo rods and appear like magic from the water, the flip or dance and splash around. Characters like the phoenix, fairies, dragon, and turtle all come from ancient Vietnamese myths and folktales. Unlike the kinds of puppets we've talked about so far, marionettes are full-length. This means they have legs and feet where the others have openings for controls. Marionettes are controlled by strings or wires attached to different parts of the puppets body depending on what kind of movement they control.