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PPP Day 15 Hospital D | Puppet Portal Project - hospital D
2009-10-26

PPP Day 15 Hospital D

The last Wednesday before term break saw the classrooms tables transforming into a small but spooky world of haunted houses and castles, inhabitat by flying stick puppets with flittering costumes.

The four children ( aged about 5 to 12) were supported by a team of "extra-adults" as we had two visitors (Edelle from Spiral Orchard who came to observe, participate and interview people involved as part of the evaluation process and Karen from Trinity who took photos) and a very engaged transistion year student on internship who worked side-to-side with the youngest boy. It was especially lovely to see how the teenager interacted with that boy and, as he later said, "helped him to express creativity" by supporting his ideas and making them work.

Each child transformed a box into a ghosts home. I initially used a little ghost puppet to introduce the theme, this puppet from time to time "spooked" around the table and commented on the houses-in-progress..The finished buildings were placed on a covered table in front of a white paper backdrop which the intern/child team decorated with collaged tree sceletons, stars and moon (some of these cut-out-shapes were attached to the back of the backdrop, so they would only become visible when illuminated from the back), also in between the haunted houses the children placed stones, "trees" (dried branches stuck in clay) and other natural materials, creating the lands- and playscape they wished.

More or less accidentily we had moved all tables and created a performance space when I realized we had not made the puppets yet, so I instead of more moving-about I just placed the puppet making materials on the floor and children and adults alike sat around them in a circle making puppets soon after. This set up totally changed the atmosphere, being very different from the usual way of working in the classroom, -it felt very homely and I would like to repeat this.

For linking up we darkened the room, all participants sat in a semi circle watching the screen and the children went on the link up one by one, later we all created a spooky soundscape for the other �s scary spooks. Some children, inspired & encouraged by their puppets image on screen and someone else asking about their puppet, started talking about or for their puppets, inventing names and all.

We finished with two performances. All children preferred to not speak nor storytell, yet with all the towers and trees there was lots to do for the floating ghosts, diving into and out of the towers was very popular... with the second pair performing after a minute or two I introduced instruments, one child played the xylophone whilst the other performed. I would like to play with this more , this could also be an idea for linking up with another hospital.