Of all the things that puppets can do, the most uncanny, and yet, most challenging is convincing puppet speech. It is an action that is often over-played or poorly played for one critical reason: That is the assumption that puppet speech must primarily originate from the mouth! This may be true enough for a hand puppet, but for marionettes, rods, and Bunraku-like puppets, the illusion of speech can and should be more complex. With these puppets we must consider the body of the puppet as the primary communicator of words. That is, from nod, to shrug, to twist, to shudder, the puppet body flows into action to support the lines of the play. Joined by the occasional well-placed movement of the mouth, a puppet becomes comfortably real.