At Auckland’s iconic fairytale theme park, Children’s Fairyland, puppetry is more than just child’s play. Young children have been inspired by the wonders of live performance at the Storybook Puppet Theatre since 1956, but now they are also exposed to arts education programs designed specifically for preschoolers. A new puppet education initiative, Puppet Playdates, takes hands-on learning to the next level.
Every Thursday at 11am and 2pm, the puppet shows bring old stories to life for a new generation. After the curtain falls, the children head to a nearby meadow to befriend the puppets.
On a recent morning, 5-year-old Amber Rose Arthur wasted no time bringing her unicorn doll to life. The doll’s sparkle sparkled in the sunlight. She occasionally nudged other children with the unicorn’s horn, granting them magical powers. Full disclosure: She also cast a little spell on this reporter.
“These events are great because kids don’t get enough art in school anymore,” her father, Gregory Arthur, said as he watched his little girl explore puppetry and social interaction all at once. “It stimulates the brain more than many other things. It makes you think, it makes you learn, and it makes you smile.”
Nestled on the shores of Lake Merritt, this captivating arts education program invites children to learn the magic of puppetry while immersing themselves in classic fables including James M. Barrie's “Peter Pan,” Frank L. Baum's “The Wizard of Oz,” and Hans Christian Andersen's “The Snow Queen.” The program also lays the foundation for a proposed puppet education program that will visit Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) early learning classrooms.
“Fairyland is designed to inspire a child’s imagination,” said Joy Peacock, director of customer and community relations for the PNC Foundation, the philanthropic arm of PNC Bank. The PNC Foundation partners with the puppet-based early learning program. “It’s not like TV where everything is ready for you. You have to rely on your imagination. Puppetry is very interactive, very tactile, very creative.”
Coming out of the pandemic, Fairyland held focus groups with local teachers to find out exactly what kinds of activities would be most beneficial for preschoolers, and what they found was that today’s kids need more social-emotional learning and exposure to their creative impulses. Enter dolls.
“One of the things that really made me sad was when teachers said that kids were losing their imagination,” said Maria Rodriguez, the puppet theater’s director. “They’re losing the ability to create fiction. I can’t imagine life without imagination. So I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. We have to inspire kids to learn how to create fiction. We want to help them light that spark.”
That's basically Jacqui June Whitlock's life mission. A former transitional kindergarten teacher with a background in theater and a love of puppetry, this is her dream job. She studied child development at university and studied the art of shadow puppetry in Bali. She's met more than one child who was too scared to express themselves, but then she gave them a puppet and suddenly they found their voice.
“For me, this has been my life’s work. Integrating puppetry with social-emotional learning is my livelihood,” said Whitlock, a puppet education specialist. “When you give a child a puppet, something amazing happens. Puppets are a great medium for storytelling and learning without putting pressure on the child.”
Whitlock is a master of learning through play. She holds court with a parade of puppets including rabbits, dragons and cats, and after a recent performance of “Peter Pan,” she loves helping children make up their own stories.
“I’ve been dreaming of doing a program like this for years, and it’s amazing that there’s finally funding for it,” she said. “In America, we tend to think of puppets as just toys for children, but there’s actually so much more to puppetry. In many other cultures, puppets are seen as so much more than that. They can be very complex tools.”
On play dates, she helps guide the little puppeteers as they learn and play. For example, when a child pretends to be bitten by a doll, she asks if the doll is hungry and starts a conversation with the child. But she always wants the child to lead the way.
“They weave their own stories,” said Whitlock, who makes many of her puppets by hand. “You don’t actually tell them what the story is; they tell you.”
Experts say empowering children to express themselves is especially important now, as this generation has missed out on many formative experiences due to school closures and other pandemics. She says the arts can be an easy way to foster special emotional learning through the kinds of virtual games that children naturally gravitate toward.
“Teachers have told me that there’s a lack of imagination in the classroom, a lack of pretend play, and that the kids aren’t interacting as much,” she said. “And dolls are a great tool for fostering that pretend play, and just interacting with each other is like a conduit for personality… It’s really easy for kids to connect with each other and break down those barriers.”
Experts say puppets can help children connect on a deeper level. Puppets serve as surrogates that help children deal with difficult situations, grapple with fears, and explore emotions through metaphors.
“One of my favorite things I’ve observed is that doll play creates a lot of interaction between adults and children,” Whitlock said. “It’s almost like time slows down. And we recently installed benches, and now we’re seeing a lot of older people, and I love the interaction between grandparents and young children. It’s very nurturing.”
Of course, puppetry can also be pure escapism, encouraging young children to create their own grand adventures.
“Children and puppetry go hand in hand because they stop questioning and have no problem bringing the simplest props to life,” says Carey Perloff, former artistic director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and a longtime puppet advocate. “Puppets are a direct gateway to imagination. They can be realistic or completely abstract, allowing the audience to project their ideas about characters and situations onto fabric or paper pulp and turn them into something magical.”
For example, Trevor Aguilar celebrated his sixth birthday with a fun story about his new furry friends. He told the story of his grandma doll's adventures in saving the townspeople from the evil schemes of a fire-breathing dragon doll. He was the last child to come to the doll play date and he didn't want the fun to end.
In fact, some children are so fascinated by the puppets that they make it a point to visit Whitlock and her puppetry cabinet every time they go to the park.
“I love having regular customers,” Whitlock said. “They know exactly what they want. ‘Okay, here I am. I’ll take a stuffed raccoon today.’”