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Primitive

Puppetry invokes our deep residual instincts for the ‘primitive’ and atavistic truths of who we are but don’t always know how to, or allow ourselves, young and old alike, to access.

Dreams

Puppets are versatile, elusive and enviable presences that roam effortlessly through cultural and personal territories, following the contours of our subconscious and of our dreams… alluring, disturbing, and renewing.

Fascination

Puppetry will always hold our fascination because it appeals uniquely and directly to our perennial child-like desire to be surprised and delighted.

Expression

Puppets are capable of extremely subtle and sophisticated expression, from protest against the potentially devastating degradation of political, and technological fallout to the transforming heights of mankind’s compassion and dignity.

Magic

Puppetry creates a magical gateway to the imagination where its creatures and personalities inhabit, embody and integrate the full expression of the stories, metaphors, cosmologies, intuitions and enduring values we aspire to and measure ourselves by.

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Uses of therapeutic puppetry and ethnographic performance with victims of violence and trauma
March 18, 2010 (1:45 pm - 6:00 pm)
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Crossing Thresholds: Therapeutic Uses of Puppetry as a Dramatherapy Medium with Adult Populations.
September 19, 2009 (4:30 pm - 5:00 pm)
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Event: 'Crossing Thresholds: Therapeutic Uses Of Puppetry As A Dramatherapy Medium With Adult Populations.'

Lecture/Talk

Date: Saturday, September 19, 2009 At 04:30:00 PM

Duration: 30 Minutes

Contact Info:

ECArTE 2009 Conference THE CENTRAL SCHOOL OF SPEECH & DRAMA, EMBASSY THEATRE 64 ETON AVENUE SWISS COTTAGE NW3 3HY U.K.

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URL: http://http://www.ecarte.info/Conference_2009/index_conference2009.html

EUROPEAN CONSORTIUM for ARTS THERAPIES EDUCATION

10^th EUROPEAN ARTS THERAPIES CONFERENCE, LONDON,UK, September2009

PAPER:   Daniel Stolfi
Title:
CROSSING THRESHOLDS:  Therapeutic uses of puppetry as a dramatherapy medium with adult populations.
Abstract:  Given the seeming ambiguity and incongruence of using puppetry therapeutically with adult populations, the form remains neglected or under-utilized.  The aim of this paper is to introduce and contextualise some of the ways the medium can be used as a dramatherapeutic tool with adult populations.
The functional and expressive properties of puppetry afford considerable potential for exploring key areas dramatherapy practitioners and their clients encounter in clinical sessions.  These include primary and secondary process, creativity and aesthetic dynamics, role theories, metaphor, projection, and transference.
This paper has been designed on the underlying premise that therapeutic puppetry is applicable to a wide range of adult population groups in diverse settings.  However, it derives from a cycle of clinical sessions with adult male offenders that formed part of the author’s recent MA dissertation, DWELLING BETWEEN THRESHOLDS, THE PUPPET AS INTERCESSOR: The use of puppetry as a dramatherapy medium with adult male offenders in a Category C prison setting.  Examples from these sessions will be drawn on as a springboard to advance the paper’s main argument. The thesis is influenced by rites of passage and ritual viewpoints within cultural and social anthropology discourse and performance theory.
Key words:  Therapeutic puppetry; adult populations; thresholds.
Biographical notes:  MA in Dramatherapy (Plymouth); Registered arts therapist (dramatherapy); Founder and Artistic Director of The Awesome Puppet Company; Specialist clinical interest in therapeutic uses of puppetry, mask, myth and story; Specialist research interest in the position of the creative arts therapies in medical and psychological anthropology.