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CHILDRENS PUPPETS AND THEATRES
Why Puppets?
Puppets have been a sophisticated means of artistic
expression, communication and instruction for 2,000 years. Working the
edge between entertainment and education, puppets can both teach and
persuade. Their creative potential is just waiting to be used to help
communities grow and change.
Special qualities of puppets
Puppets are moving Puppets strike a deal with their
creators. You move them, and they move you. Whatever their materials,
whatever their size, however cheaply they have been put together, all
puppets come to life as characters. The puppet maker provides a face,
eyes, perhaps some hair and a mouth. The puppeteer provides movement and
give the puppet a voice. We see the puppet move, we hear it speak and we
are caught up in its world. Instead of wood, paper mache or plastic, we
see a character, a hero to cheer or a villain to boo, a tragic figure
who can move us to tears or a comic figure who will make us laugh out
loud.
Puppets entertain and educate
Puppets in a theatre can work the edge between entertainment and
information. They line up alongside drama, storytelling, drumming and
dance as art forms that can also teach and persuade. The entertainment
comes first. It draws us in, and once we have lost ourselves in the
world the puppets create, we accept the message without even realizing
that we are learning. Lessons learned in this way are more likely to be
remembered and to become part of our solid stock of knowledge.
Puppets are safe
Because they are characters, not people, puppets are
the ideal medium for discussing sensitive issues. Puppets create a world
in which we recognize ourselves and identify with the characters as the
drama unfolds. At the same time, a puppet show seems to hold a piece of
"safety glass" between the action and the audience-although we
are drawn into the drama, we are not threatened by it. It is an
extraordinary phenomenon that an audience will accept from a puppet what
would cause offence or embarrassment if it came from a live actor. That
is why puppets are now widely used in teaching about AIDS and other
sensitive matters.
Puppets can portray "bad" characters in a
community without pointing the finger at a real individual. They can be
used to draw out disagreements within a community or a family without
fanning the flames of conflict in the audience. They can be used to talk
to black and white children about race and conflict. They can be used to
promote the rights of girls to adults who will not listen to a lecture.
They can perform to a mixed audience in areas where men and women must
sit apart to watch live actors.
A puppet may look terrifying, but its sense of menace
is contained. Partly, this is because most puppets are small (even large
puppets are often no more than child-sized). But it is not just a
question of size. Puppets function more completely within their own
"theatre" than human actors do. We are often aware of actors
as people who put on a part for a performance and put it aside when they
leave the stage. Puppets have no existence independent of their
characters. They come without the baggage that accompanies a human
actor, and they can get away with things that humans cannot.
Puppets for children
Children relate to puppets from their earliest years
because they are used to making inanimate characters come to life.
Children are puppeteers themselves from the first time they pick up a
shoe, a squeezed-out half orange or a hairbrush and make it move and
talk. Toys and dolls take an active role in children's play. They laugh
and talk and argue. They try on personalities and take them off again.
The child makes her doll move-she is the puppeteer. She scolds her doll
in the stern but loving voice of a mother-she is an actor. She makes her
doll stamp its foot and then laughs at the effect-she is the audience.
After this early experience a child recognises puppets as legitimate and
natural.
The puppet can be whatever the puppeteer and the child
make it. It can be the child's friend without demanding something in
return. It can be a clown. It can be naughty and get into trouble
without hurting anyone. It can say what the child thinks, feel what the
child feels and share a child's sadness. It can show a child who knows
poverty, hunger, war and loss that there can also be joy and love and a
happy ending. A puppet can tell a child who rarely hears it that he is
loved. A puppet can show a child that her father or mother can also be
sad, and it can demonstrate the value of love, the futility of quarrel
and the benefit of cooperation and support.
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