I never really understood the attraction of puppets as little people. And though I appreciate the difficulty of making puppets do person things and somehow live person lives, I am not very interested in the creation of miniature worlds.
Far better to see puppets as forces -- emotional, dramatic, and sentient entities. And better to let puppets be the metaphorical beings they are: agents of mythos. An effective and modern use of puppets takes a play to an abstract plane, a turned page, a whole new narrative realm. Given the proper structural support and the right moment, puppets enrich and deepen a play in just the way an illustration invigorates a story.