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Hospital C Day 4 | Puppet Portal Project Hospital C
2009-05-20
Hospital C Day 4
An Irishwoman, A Slovakian and a Belrussian were chatting via video link to a frog one day....
Developed on the theme of musical puppets today - the secret is postage tubes and elastic bands. We made `string`, percussion and shaker speicmens and one beaded sock-puppet-butterfly who has a weakness for tasty fingers and other peoples meds. All our puppeteers spoke different languages or none today so the musical communication and movement worked out well. The puppets visited animals in a zoo and created sound effects to accompany the encounters.
One girl`s voice has been very low after a tracheotomy, and she was reluctant to narrate her performance. But we used Audacity to make her voice sound like a chipmunk and she enjoyed listening back.
Eventually I and the little slovakian girl discovered the best way to communicate was through gobbledegook and song. We swopped a dictaphone back and forth and captured some classics - being one-to-one helped her confidence and hearing her own invented language played back seemed to relax her apprehensions about speaking.
The third participant today had little mobility and no speech currently, so I built the sock-puppet-butterfly on her arm, thanks to a tip from Helene. This turned into a mini-show and got some genuine lovely laughs from the little girl. She lifted her hand to show everyone who came to look in on the progress.
We linked up via video with another Hospital and Mr. Crusoe (courtesy of Helene Hugel). Everyone practised counting, a little French and tickling the on-screen characters. Mr. Crusoe had great reactions to being tickled and was totally entertaining despite the language barriers.
Overall a good day but still room for improvement on generating stories and facilitating good, simple performance spaces/backdrops.
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