“The life of man to represent
And turn it all to ridicule,
Wit did a puppet-show invent,
Where the chief actor is a fool.”
JONATHAN SWIFT.
No one appreciates how funny people are until he has written a play for puppets. There’s nothing any person has ever said which isn’t amusing, honestly and truly amusing, when transferred to the mouth of a marionette. Try it and see.
Take any conversation you may have overheard. Take as many puppets as there were people talking. Dress them to indicate the characters, try to imitate the most pronounced gestures and postures of your people ... and let them speak, verbatim, the words that have been spoken.
It is simply funny, a sort of unconscious, undeniable criticism of the manners of men. There will always be a point, too, a sort of moral at the minimum. No one can fail to see it, either in the words or the gestures or the situations. The puppets will find it and bring it out. Produce the puppets and try it!
I frankly confess I shudder to imagine myself done in puppet. What a cure for idiosyncrasies and affectations!