Short answers, pulled from the story.
Puppetry is a form of theatre or performance that involves the manipulation of puppets, inanimate objects often resembling a human or animal figure, animated by a human called a puppeteer. Puppeteers use movements from their hands and arms to control rods or strings that move the puppet's body, head, limbs, and sometimes the mouth and eyes. The puppeteer sometimes speaks in the character's voice and at other times performs to a recorded soundtrack.
Puppetry was first recorded in the 5th century BC in Ancient Greece, where the oldest written records appear in the works of Herodotus and Xenophon. Some forms of puppetry may have originated as long ago as 3000 years BCE, and the art is thought to have begun about 4000 years ago.
The main types include finger puppets, sock puppets, hand or glove puppets, marionettes, and rod puppets. Finger and sock puppets are the simplest, hand puppets like Punch and Judy are controlled by one hand inside the figure, marionettes hang from strings often with a control bar from above, and rod puppets use a central rod with separate rods for the arms.
Bunraku is a Japanese form of puppetry that developed out of Shinto temple rites and became highly sophisticated. By 1730, three puppeteers operated each puppet in full view of the audience, dressed all in black so they became invisible against a black background while torches lit only the wooden puppets. The playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon gave up kabuki to write exclusively for bunraku.
Punch and Judy traces its roots to the 16th century and the Italian Commedia dell'arte. The character of Punch derives from Pulcinella, which was Anglicized to Punchinello, and Punch's wife was originally named Joan before she became Judy. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries the show was performed in an easily transportable booth in Britain.
Jim Henson created a type of soft, foam-rubber and cloth puppet known collectively as Muppets, first appearing on Sesame Street and later in The Muppet Show and on film. He also branched into animatronics through his Creature Shop, showcased in The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. The Jim Henson Foundation, created to promote puppetry in the United States, has bestowed 440 grants to puppet theatre artists.