Reporter
angelo.jedidiah@guardian.co.tt
For some children—and even some adults—finding their voice is not always easy. However, the Puppet Palace workshop is proving that, with a little imagination and a puppet, it can make all the difference.
Where some may suffer from social anxiety or struggle with communication, Puppet Palace founder and educator Dawsher Charles, who has formally studied the art, says puppetry can be used as a powerful tool to shape young minds.
“When I did puppetry, I fell in love with how puppets allowed me to express myself without even saying a word. And so from there I started to work with children one-on-one using puppets as a means of creative self-expression,” Charles told Guardian Media.
She said more parents and educators are consistently seeking tools to boost children’s creativity and imagination.
She said Puppet Palace, under the umbrella of her education business, Survival Scholars, located in Trincity, has been a significant success since its inception in 2019. By utilising a combination of string, hand and finger puppets, the palace provides children with a safe space to navigate stress and grief, particularly for those with low confidence, sensory issues, or those facing the immense pressure of the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) exams.
“Puppetry is very dynamic in the means of allowing children to creatively express themselves. It allows them to express themselves without even seeing a word, especially through making their own puppets. When a child makes their own puppets, you can learn a lot about them and what they are exposed to,” Charles said.
Beyond putting on themed shows performed by the workshop, children also develop deeper concentration skills while designing their own characters. The results, Charles shares, are often both surprising and deeply revealing.
“You would see children making spliffs in their puppets. Sometimes you would see children putting on tattoos and tongue rings and so forth. It just shows you what they have in their mind and what they are exposed to. It is actually beneficial for them so that they can express it through their puppets as opposed to expressing it in real life.”
If a child is socially withdrawn, playing with puppets offers a safe place to socialise and build storylines, further developing their skills in character creation.
However, Charles, who is also a certified trauma and crisis management specialist, says the benefits of puppetry are not limited to students.
She notes that puppetry aids in relationship therapy, giving adults the freedom to express themselves and serving as a unique team-building activity for corporations.
“Last year we did four companies. We are actually venturing into that more now. There are different ways companies can do team-building activities and if you share puppetry as one, they might think that is ‘baby thing.’ But when they do it, they are like ‘oh my gosh, this was nice, this was different,’” Charles shared.
Adults have also taken a liking to the “Sip and Puppetry” sessions offered by the palace.
But for people of all ages, the mission remains refreshingly simple, yet deeply effective: sometimes, a puppet is all you need to finally be heard.
