Puppets entertain and educate : Puppets 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 are 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 recognizes 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. Puppets are for adults: Despite the special relationship between puppets and children, puppets also speak to adults. The roots of puppetry are deeply connected with mystery, symbolism and religion. The earliest adventure stories were instructional, advising people on the right way to live. Traditional puppet stories from India, Indonesia, Japan and Eastern Europe have been devised for and watched by adults.