Special Projects in Education

The use of puppetry for special events, celebrations, or to address social issues can lead to memorable community programs. Over the years, Mock Turtle has  offered workshops and performances on subjects as varied as local history and drug abuse. Recent special projects in educational puppetry have focused on cultural exchange and choral music.

From Rwanda to Noah’s Arc

Puppet exchanges between schools in widely different cultures is an amazing way of spreading good will and teaching diversity in the classroom. Based on an earlier puppet exchange between local schools and the Lakota Indian reservation, Mock Turtle conducted a thoroughly successful puppet and poetry exchange with a school in Rwanda in 2019.  Photos, poetry, videos, and even the physical puppets were exchanged as part of a culminating school assembly.

Another recent example of puppets-in-education was our collaboration with The Bach Choir of Bethlehem and Pennsylvania Youth Theatre to create animal masks for almost sixty student performers. The final production of Benjamin Britten’s Noah’s Flood was a great success.

How Special Projects Work

Special educational projects often derive from an institutional or community need. This makes special puppet projects highly collaborative. In our puppet exchange with Rwanda, for example, every step from the crafting of puppets to writing poetry to video-taping assembly programs required a constant exchange of emails between Pennsylvania and Rwanda. Likewise, our Noah’s Flood  project involved consultations on mask sizes, animal types, and the scheduling of workshops.

Goals and Outcomes

Special puppet  projects are generally associated with specific outcomes like school assemblies, community events or public celebrations.   Puppetry in general, offers a large group of children to have a real role in the success of the event both as puppet-makers and performers.   This is particularly true of projects that involve children in the creation of original puppet scripts or poems that enrich the purpose of the final performance.