Do you speak puppetry

Creating a Safe Creative Space

When I first began working at a school for behaviorally disabled boys in Israel, I met Shlomo. He was fourteen years old and came from a very troubled family. I had brought a bag of my hand puppets to his class and had invited the students to select a puppet and make up a story about it. Shlomo picked a turtle that could go in and out of its shell. He told a story about the turtle saying that it moved very slowly because it had to carry its heavy house with it everywhere. Only the turtle could go inside the house because it was filled with many dark secrets. A student asked Shlomo if this was like his home. This question infuriated Shlomo. He threw the puppet at the boy who asked the question and yelled at all of us, �I am talking about that stupid puppet!� It took a while to calm him down and even more time for me to win his trust again. The boundaries of his safe creative space had been violated.

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