The Sincerityof Silliness

We performed our first puppet show just before Christmas in the high school in the small village of Sunja. In this show we aimed to promote volunteering as a valuable activity for young people and there community. We decided to approach this through the angle of co-operation by demonstrating how exciting it can be to work together on a problem, and how we can learn from and appreciate each other because everyone has something valuable to contribute. I know that this is an obvious message to give to children, but I think it is a really interesting way of looking at the world if we can continue to apply this ethos into our adult "real lives". I think we would live in a much more effective society if people took time to appreciate the skills and qualities of other people and learned how there-own skills worked in accordance to the skills of those around them. I feel that if this were to happen we would create an exchange of skills and knowledge so there would be less need for exchange of money, and we would there for have a deeper understanding of value.

In this show we presented this ethos in three stages. We started with an interactive piece of puppetry. This got the children actively engaged with us and each other. Our main characters of this piece were two donkeys that emerged from behind where the children were sitting. This surprised and delighted the children and they were not shy to get involved by stroking them. As you can see from the photo the children had to move around to see the puppets and respond to things happening on different sides of the room (if you look carefully you can see another donkey on the other side). The children also responded to each other very strongly, for example they enjoyed the reaction of one boy when he was closely paying attention to one of the donkeys on the other side of the room, and the other donkey snuck up behind him and gave him a shock. This hole process was very entertaining and fun, but I also feel all the interactions were significant and engaged the children socially, imaginatively and joyfully.

In the next phase, we performed a short scenario about the two donkeys having a dispute over food. As you can see from the picture they are tied together and there for cannot reach their own bucket. A facilitator then enters and leads the children in a discussion about what the donkeys should do next, concluding that they should co-operate by sharing their food together. The donkeys then act out the conclusion.

This was a very slap-stick performance that removed the language barrier, and included a local volunteer to play the facilitator. Although the story was very simple it allowed the children to be actively involved in the end result, giving the children a sense of empowerment and adding that all-important fun element.

Our third and final phase of this session was to lead the children in a workshop using different co-operation games, to give them a practical experience of how they can work together and learn from each-other. We led various exercises where the children learned to work in different groups and in different ways. Sometimes they were in pairs, other times in small groups, and even altogether as one large group. We would give them problems that they would have to solve together sometimes through discussion and sometimes in silence.

We were surprised and impressed how well the children responded to us and to each-other, and we now feel very encouraged and inspired by this group to continue with this project and take this session to other schools and create new scenarios to perform in this way.

#puppets