Puppetry is a form of performance which involves the manipulation of puppets. It is very ancient, and is believed to have originated 30,000 years BCE. Puppetry takes many forms but they all share the process of animating inanimate performing objects. Puppetry is used in almost all human societies both as an entertainment – in performance – and ceremonially in rituals and celebrations such as carnival.

Most puppetry involves storytelling. The impact of puppetry depends on the process of transformation of puppets, which has much in common with magic and with play. Thus puppetry can create complex and magical theatre with relatively small resources.

Animation is the process of animating objects in time-based media such as film or video and is a simulation of movement created by displaying a series of pictures, or frames. Traditionally, debate has existed within the puppetry and animation communities as to whether or not animation should be considered a form of puppetry or vice versa, but regardless the two art forms share much in common and are closely associated with each other.

The origins of puppetry lie with ritual magic. Puppet theatre has featured in almost all civilizations. In Europe there are written records of it from the fifth century bc, and puppets certainly figured in the repertoire of medieval jongleurs. In sixteenth-century Italy they were closely linked with the characters of the commedia dell'arte, though in England they played mainly folk stories and popular Old Testament stories. The introduction of Punch into England in the seventeenth century united these two traditions. Puppet theatre has customarily been a form of folk theatre, often featuring a comic character, such as Petroushka in Russia or Pulcinella in Naples.

Occasionally, however, puppet theatre has become a fashionable, élite entertainment. In the eighteenth century, various operas were composed for puppets; Alessandro Scarlatti wrote works for Cardinal Ottoboni's theatre in Rome, as did Joseph Haydn for Count Esterhazy. The puppet theatre occasionally provided a fine vehicle for parody, as in early Hanoverian England, when Powell's Covent Garden theatre attained celebrity by sending up the vogue for Italian opera, and Henry Fielding, Samuel Foote, and other comic writers presented puppet shows to burlesque contemporary fashions.