Journal articles on the topic 'Puppet theater in education Puppet plays'

Background, problems and innovations of the study. The modern Puppet Theater in Poland is a phenomenon that is very difficult for definition and it opposes its own identification itself. Problems here start at the stage of fundamental definitions already. In English, the case is simpler: “doll” means a doll, a toy, and “puppet” is a theatrical puppet, as well as in French functions “poupée” and “marionette” respectively. In Polish, one word serves both semantic concepts, and it is the reason that most identify the theater of puppets with theater for children, that is a big mistake. Wanting to get out of this hassle, some theaters have thrown out their puppet signage by skipping their own names. Changes in names were intended only to convey information to viewers that in these theaters do not always operate with puppets and not always for the children’s audience. In view of the use of the word “animation” in Polish, that is, “vitalization”, and also the “animator”, that is, “actor who is animating the puppet”, the term “animant” is suggested, which logically, in our opinion, is used unlike from the word “puppet”. Every subject that is animated by animator can be called an animant, starting with classical puppets (glove puppets, cane puppets, excretory puppets, silhouette puppets, tantamarees, etc.) to various plastic shapes (animals, images of fantastic creatures or unrelated to any known), any finished products (such as chairs, umbrellas, cups), as well as immaterial, which are animated in the course of action directed by the actor, either visible to viewers or hidden. In short, the animator animates the animant. If the phenomenon of vitalization does not come, that is, the act of giving “the animant” the illusion of life does not occur, then objects on the stage remain only the requisite or elements of scenography. Synopsis of the main material of the study. In the past, puppet performances, whether fair or vernacular, were seen by everyone who wanted, regardless of age. At the turn of the XIX–XX centuries, the puppet theater got divided into two separate areas – theater for adults and the one for children. After the war, the professional puppet theater for adults became a branch of the puppet theater for children. In general, little has changed so far. The only puppet theater that plays exclusively for adults is “Theater – the Impossible Union”, under the direction of Mark Khodachinsky. In the Polish puppet theater the literary model still dominates, that is, the principle of starting to work on the performance from the choice of drama. There is no such literary work, old or modern, which could not be adapted for the puppet theater. The only important thing is how and why to do it, what significance carries the use of animants, and also, whether the applying of animation does the audience mislead, as it happens when under the name of the puppet theater at the festival shows performances that have nothing in common with puppets / animations. What special the puppet theater has to offer the adult audience? The possibilities are enormous, and in the historical perspective may be many significant achievements, but this does not mean that the masterpieces are born on the stones. The daily offer of theaters varies, and in reality the puppet theaters repertoire for adults is quite modest. The metaphorical potential of puppets equally well justifies themselves, both in the classics and in modern drama. The animants perfectly show themselves in a poetry theater, fairy-tale, conventional and surrealistic. The puppet theater has an exceptional ability to embody inhuman creatures. These can be figures of deities, angels, devils, spirits, envy, death. At the puppet scenes, also animals act; come alive ordinary household items – chairs, umbrellas, fruits and vegetables, whose animation gives not only an interesting comic effect or grotesque, but also demonstrates another, more empathic view of the whole world around us. In the theater of dolls there is no limit to the imagination of creators, because literally everything can became an animant. You need only puppeteers. The puppet theater in Poland, for both children and adults, has strong organizational foundations. There are about 30 institutional theaters (city or voivodship), as well as an increasing number of “independent theaters”. The POLUNIMA, that is, the Polish branch of the UNIMA International Union of Puppets, operates. The valuable, bilingual (Polish–English) quarterly magazine “Puppet Theater” is being issued. The number of puppet festivals is increasing rapidly, and three of them are devoted to the adult puppet theater: “Puppet is also a human” in Warsaw, “Materia Prima” in Krakow, “Metamorphoses of Puppets” in Bialystok. There is no shortage of good dramas for both adults and children (thanks to the periodical “New Art for Children and Youth” published by the Center for Children’s Arts in Poznan). Conclusions. One of the main problems is the lack of vocational education in the field of the scenography of the puppet theater. The next aspect – creative and now else financial – the puppet show is more difficult, in general more expensive and more time-consuming in preparation than the performance in the drama theater. Actor-puppeteer also gets a task those three times heavier: to play live (as an actor in a drama theater), while playing a puppet and with a puppet. Consequently, the narrative of dramatic story on the stage is triple: the actor in relation to the viewer, the puppet in relation to the viewer, the actor in relation to the puppet. The director also works double – both the actor and the puppet should be led. It is necessary to observe the effect that arises from the actions of both stage partners. So the second threat seems to be absurd, but, alas, it is very real – the escape of puppeteers from puppets. The art of the puppet theater requires hard work, and by its nature, it is more chamber. This art is important for gourmets, poets, admirers of animation skills, as well as the searchers for new artistic ways in the theater, in wide understanding. Fortunately, there are some real fans of the puppet theater, and their admiration for the miracle of animation is contagious.

Although sixty years have passed since the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War scant regard has been given to the theatre's contribution during the conflict to the entertainment and education of soldiers. Yet drama was prominent in the range of cultural and pedagogic activities which was a marked characteristic of the Republican army. A distinct genre, known as teatro de uigencia (theatre of urgency), was actively promoted by the Republican authorities as a means of encouraging soldiers and civilians towards a ‘correct’ pro-Republican perspective. Teatro de uigencia works were generally short, single act pieces but with a surprising variety of dramatic styles and propaganda intentions. Satirical lampooning of Franco's Nationalist forces took place, for example, alongside drama whose earnestly expressed purpose was to train the enthusiastic but inexperienced Popular Militias in battlefield strategy, the importance of fortification and the need for rigorous self-discipline. Such plays were performed by a variety of theatre companies. Some, such as Lorca's La Barraca and Max Aub's El Búho, had existed since before the war but travelled to frontline locations during the conflict to lend vigorous support to the Republican forces. Other companies, known as Guerrillas del Teatro, arose from initiatives of the Ministry of Education and were attached to the Army of the Centre and the Army of the East. Still more groups were encouraged by the General Commissariat of War through its Sub-Commissariat of Agitation, Press and Propaganda. While precise details are extremely sketchy, it is also clear that, within army units themselves, performance troupes were formed for the purposes of entertainment and politico-military education through drama.

This scientific article focuses on plays written only in regard to child literature by writers from Nakhchivan. Works written by some writers such as J.Mammadguluzada, A.Abbasov, A.Yadigar, Tofig Mutallibov, K.Agayeva, B.Iskandarli, Z.Vedili, T.Seyidov, S.Djanbakhshiyev etc are involved in research. Plays for children are the most important field in terms of influencing child's inner world and forming child's mindset. Considering these fact we can say that plays written by writers from Nakhchivan have great impact on the literal- aesthetical education of young generation. The dramaturgy of child and the youth has entered a new phase of development since 1960. Over these years the theme of child dramaturgy has so expanded that it has started to play a marked role in the education of young generation.In this field Puppet theatre named after Mammad Tagi Sidgi and Nakhchivan State Child theatre has immense services. Top priorities of these theatre are works written on a basis of Azerbaijan folk fairy tales. The recording of fairy tales are crucially important in this time when there is a considerable decline in book reading habits and fairy tales are getting forgotten gradually. The opportunities of this field in the enlightenment of children are extensive. Key words: Nakhchivan, dramaturgy, child, literature, play, spectacle

The recent acquisition of space for the Museum of Puppetry at Ljubljana Castle (on the occasion of the centenary of puppet art in Slovenia) is one of the more important steps towards achieving the goal of finally granting puppet art its proper place among the performing arts as well as in the entire history of art in Slovenia. The greater part of the museum mission has been taken over by Ljubljana Puppet Theatre, wherein they prepared an excellent work project and brought to fruition one of the best museum presentations in Slovenia around. They present the history of Slovenian puppetry at a very high professional level (authors: Ajda Rooss and Nadja Ocepek) and, at the same time, have established that the collection must be studied carefully and properly preserved and restored (Zala Kalan). Thus, the new museum has achieved a perfect balance between fun, play, cultivation and education.

The author applies the aesthetics of reception (Hans Robert Jauss), which refers to literary texts, to puppet shows. This paper examines performances from Zadar Puppet Theater, which have long been held in repertoire. The plays Little Red Riding Hood (1952) and How Long is a Tale (1996) were selected. Little Red Riding Hood was produced at a time when puppet theater was an imitation of acting theater, and the play How Long is a Tale arouse during the era of postmodern puppetry when the screen disappeared and the puppet could be created from any material.

Background, objectives of the research. The article reveals the method of improving the professional skills of the actor of the puppet theater, aimed at the organic connection of the puppet technique with the actor’s internal psycho-techniques. The peculiarity of creating a stage image in the puppet theater is that the functions of the puppeteer actor in the creating of a role “on the inside line” coincide with the functions of the drama theatre actor. However, the process of making the stage character in the puppet show is built according to other laws: “vitalizing” through the puppet – the main instrument of the puppeteer. Based on the methods of teaching professional subjects in high schools of puppeteers of Kiev and St.-Petersburg, the author develops and complements the teaching methods of the puppet theater actor’s skills, concentrating on the puppet-master’s technique and the process of gradually “reviving” a puppet by virtue of an actor training. Results of the study. Mastering professional skills and abilities takes place based on of working with puppets of various systems in training exercises and sketches, which gradually fills with elements of acting; continues and improves on the stage of the educational theater and ends with the creation of a stage image with a puppet in a diploma performance. The training provides such an external technique, with which the actor-puppeteer correctly performs all kinds of puppet’s moves. For this purpose, it is necessary to learn the possibilities of the puppet in the process of physical incarnation of a role, it is necessary to understand the laws of its convincing plastic living. This can be achieved through training, resulting in skills that will become semi-automatic. The wonder of the puppetry lies in the fact that the viewer, even in the “open manner”, does not notice the puppeteer and directs all his attention to the puppet, watching her “process of living”. However, the skills and abilities themselves will not become expressive means until they are will be connected with the internal psychology of the actor. The purpose of educating the puppet theater actor is to teach him the organic, natural playing with a puppet. The training involves visual control over the puppet, coordination of the self-own body with the puppet’s body and gradual introduction to the training process the elements of actor psychophysics. Because an actor creates an inner image, and the puppet becomes an external plastic expression, a manifestation of this image. The puppet mastering consists in the fact, that the puppet in the hands of the puppeteer reproduces meaningfully and consistently a series of sculptural finished poses, characteristic for a particular role. The construction of sculptural mise-en-scenes and plastic dialogues requires the possession of skills of “microscopic” hand plastics. “Micro-plastics” convinces viewers in presence of an internal monologue and permanent “life” a puppet on a stage. Alternation of movement and expressive postures is the component of the stage action of a puppet. Gradually, through regular training, students in practice study the technical possibilities of the “body” of the puppet – its torso, head, hands, “legs”, beginning to use them freely in stage action. It is advisable to start the development of puppeteer’ technique from the cane puppet, because its construction is closer to the “human”. The observation of the plasticity of the human body takes place in rhythmic lessons. Imaginative thinking of a student and his fantasy help to acquire the ability to analyze, control, choose moves of a puppet, and mutually co-ordinate them in space. Teaching the profession of puppet actor begins with the lessons aimed at the development of plastics of hands and fingers, their professional position. Work of hands is the first and necessary link in the creativity of the actors of the puppet theater. The degree of their training depends on accuracy of working with a puppet. Therefore, it is so important, before giving the student a puppet, to draw his attention to the constant training of dexterity, ductility and expressiveness of hands. In exactly owning gymnastics of the puppet actor’s hands, performing different imaginative and musical-plastic exercises and etudes, a student acquires the vocational specificities and develops his own internal abilities. Such a technique is necessary for the gradual transition from the technique of movement to the ability to use independently this technique for the embodiment of creative ideas in etudes. Creation of etudes is a continuation of training exercises and based on the inventing of the proposed circumstances requiring certain effective actions in these conditions. Motivation for action arises from familiar, understandable, vital for the student of the proposed circumstances. The student gradually, from the rehearsal to the rehearsal, clarifies the plot of the sketch, enriches and clears the proposed circumstances, based on which the storyline unfolds, that forces him to select and fixe the behavior of the actors. Etudes develop a student’s fantasy; they promote the assimilation of the laws of stage action. In etudes, students make their first steps in scenic communication with a partner – a puppet. In etudes, the student first encounters the need to create a scenic character and his behavior logic in the proposed circumstances. All stages of creating a stage etude a student takes on individual classes with a teacher. Conclusions. The process of forming the future actor-puppeteer has a complex character including as well as the mastering the techniques of driving puppets of different systems, from traditional to modern, and the actor’s mastership – the art of stage – reincarnation. This process continues on the stage of the training theater, where the student receives his first scenic practice – in the main and occasional roles, in mass scenes, in partner interaction. The image created in the diploma performance must carry all the signs of the actor-puppeteer profession: temperament, humor, actor mastership and the perfect possession of puppet technique, in any system of theatrical dolls. The Higher Theater Schools of Ukraine basing on the traditions and the latest achievements of stage art, forms the actors-puppeteers who professionally own all of major puppet systems and have the necessary skills to create a scenic image with a puppet. Such an actor will be able to enter in a creative team of a professional theater and continue searching for new expressive possibilities of a puppet at the theatrical stage.

Puppet theater was considered a marginal form of entertainment during Mexico's colonial era. People saw puppet plays on temporary stages outside of churches, at various fairs, and in private homes. The puppet groups were officially overshadowed by the theater performances, especially those at the Coliseum of Comedias, one of the financial channels for the Hospital Real de Naturales. Leasing the coliseum provided one of the major sources of income for this royal charity for indigenous health care. In order to maintain the Coliseum's profitability and the benefits derived from it, colonial authorities prohibited most theater groups from performing outside of the Coliseum. The lease owner often called for government assistance against puppet troupes, in particular when they threatened attendance at the theater. This resulted in the so-called “League Comedy” (Comedia de la legua), which was a performance given at least five leagues outside of the central theater district of Mexico City, Puebla, and Guadalajara.

The purpose of this research is to describe the characteristics of the needs and development models on the “Wayang Banjaran Bima” Stories of Based on Drama Text with a Character Education for High School / Vocational School. The study is conducted by using research and development design. The enrichment book is developed by applying the feasibility aspects of it, book consisting of four aspects namely material, linguistic, presentation, and graphic. In addition, enrichment book products are arranged in accordance with the principles of preparation of enrichment books such as having conformity with educational goals, adjusting to the development of science, and developing the ability to reason. The draft enrichment book consists of the beginning, contents, and last. The enrichment book development of products are based on the characteristics of the students needs who expect the preparation of puppet story material based on drama texts and there is a character education content. The puppet story is developed in the form of a drama script text divided into six the Banjaran Bima plays, namely (1) Bima Bungkus, (2) Bale Sigala-gala, (3) Dewa Ruci, (4) Bima Suci, (5) Jagal Abilawa, and ( 6) Pandhu Swarga. The content of character education is inserted into the whole story in the conclusion section at the end story. With the content of character education students are expected to be able to understand the values contained in the puppet story and it can be applied in everyday life.

In this article we analyze documents written by Rosario Castellanos during the years that she worked as a scriptwriter for the puppet plays in the Highlands of Chiapas. These plays were part of educational campaigns aimed at the Tsotsil and Tseltal Maya population. We show that the discourses circulating during the years in which indigenous politics was being constructed were permeated by opposing and contradictory ideological tensions, tensions that were reflected in the proposal and use of categories of identification of the population and their languages, in the theoretical objectives and ideals and in the participants’ personal and collective stories.

This research aims to describe gendhing patalon in Wayang (shadow puppet) Purwa related to the context of Islamic teachings. Hermeneutic method and theory are employed to explore this study object. Wayang Purwa is Javanese manifestation of collective reflection and contemplation, tafakur and tadzakur. Wayang Purwa, with its artistic values, has spiritual education or al-tarbiyah al-rabbaniyah and morality concepts or al-akhlaq al-karimah. The dalang (puppet master), wiyaga (gamelan musician) and waranggana (gamelan choir) believe this gendhing was created by Walisanga (the nine Islamic pioneers in Java). Dalang, with his central position in the show of Wayang Purwa ought to teach his audience to do righteous deeds or amal shalih. The sacred Gendhing patalon conveys a religious atmosphere, which gives mystical experiences to its audiences. By seeing the performance, the audience is expected to get the idea of the self essence - rasa jati or makrifat. It is called wikan sangkan paraning dumadi or ‘knowing the highest truth’. Wayang Purwa plays its role for young generation in moral education, character building, and national identity in this global era. Problems of life as well as the nation can be solved by local wisdom approach.

The formation process of the Crimean Tatar theater can be divided into the following periods: medieval – folk theater (the initial round dance and toy puppet theater of shadows “Karagoz”, the theater of one actor “meddah”, the arena theater “orta oyuny”); Khan`s theater in the middle of the XVIII century (penetration into the Crimea of European theater traditions in the era of the Crimean Khan Crym Girey I); the revival of traditions of the Crimean Tatar theater late XIX–XX centuries (the activities of a theater-goers group of the Jadidist Crimean Tatar youth–followers of I. Gasprinsky, under the leadership of J. Meinov – the efforts of the Crimean Tatar noblewoman-myrzachkas under the leadership of A. Taiganskaya; organization of a professional Simferopol Tatar theater troupe under the People’s Commissar of Education of the Crimean ASSR in 1921 and creation and activities of the Crimean Tatar Drama Theater, headed by A. Taigan, and the Crimean Tatar amateur movement in the Crimea, and among the Crimean Tatar foreign diaspora of 1923–1944 (Soviet pre-deportation period); recreation and current activities of the Crimean Tatar theater in the Crimea,1989 (post deportation period). In this article, for the first time in the art history, is revealed the so-called Khan`s period in the formation of the Crimean Tatar theater, discussed the revolutionary activity in the field of Crimean Tatar art, the ascetic activity of the Crimean Khan Crym Girey I to promote the ideas of European theater traditions and create a classical theater in the Crimea. The picture of the actions undertaken by the Crimean ruler in the construction of theater business in the Crimea, as well as his thoughts and statements about the theater, was recreated according to the text published in the XVIII century, memories of personal meetings and conversations with Crym Girey I of European authors: German – von der Goltz, Polish – Pilshtynova, Russian – Nikiforov, Frenchman – de Tott, Austrian – Kleeman. Based on these recollections is built a clear and explicit picture of a role of Crym Girey I as a pioneer in bringing European theater traditions and creation of a classical theater in the culture of the Crimea, the Turkic and Muslim worlds.

Wayang Kulit Kelantan is one of the traditional theatre performance that holds unique identity. This shadow play performance uses gambalan (shadow puppet) to depict the characters from the Hikayat Seri Rama (a repertoire of Wayang Kulit Kelantan). There are two main characters in Wayang Kulit Kelantan, which are refined characters and rough characters. This research focuses only on the similarity in identity of the refined characters which encompass high percentage of feminine traits. The discussion in this paperwork only focuses on two refined characters which are Seri Rama and Siti Dewi. This discussion is structured based on Gender Schema Theory by Bem, through the application of Bem Sex-Role Inventory as the tool to determine the feminine traits that exist in these refined characters. With the use of this inventory, it is discovered that all three of these characters have high percentage of feminine traits even though from different gender. Therefore this research has made a new discovery through primarily applying western theory in the identification process of refined characters of Wayang Kulit Kelantan.

When the teachings of Islam were spread on the island of Java, the majority of people who still embraced Hinduism had a fondness in watching the wayang performances. Historically, the wali songo using cultural approach and plays a major role in the development of wayang in Indonesia. In addition to using wayang as a medium of propaganda, also through various forms of other cultural acculturation for example through the creation of Javanese Islamic songs, gamelan, and Islamic story. In wayang kulit performances bring a lot of influence for the Java community because it contains many philosophy of life and values of the noble. The wayang culture, which continues to evolve from time to time, is also a medium of information, da'wah, education, entertainment, philosophical understanding, as well as entertainment, as well as the philosophical value embodied in puppet always invites society to do good and avoid crime.

In the modern socio-cultural space, which is based on globalization processes, the principles of transculturalism and technocentrism, the idea of comprehension of the cultural code and value absolute manifestly comes itself to the forefront. The comic beginning as an aesthetic and cultural phenomenon is a way of expressing the value worldview system, it is verbalized as an ethno-marked substrate in the axiological picture of the world of the people. The article is devoted to the comprehension of the mode of the comic on the basis of the plays "The old hare" of N. Kolyada and "33 happiness" of O. Bogaev. This category is studied in the aesthetic and philosophical context as a way of dialogue with traditions, the search for national archetypes and overcoming the socio-cultural crisis. The dominant features of the poetics of the comic beginning, which is significantly complicated by philosophical searches are determined using the following artistic strategies: carnivalization (a system of images, models of heroes, linguistic experimentalism, plot-compositional beginning), irony, grotesque, binary opposition (tragic – comic), defamiliarisation, game intertextual beginning as a way of comprehending the cultural tradition and dialogue with the classics, mythologization, intermediality, artistic technique of the mask, trickster myth, the Menippean nature of the text canvas, the compositional structure of theater-in-the-theater, the motive of repetition. The signs of the semiotic system are analyzed as a way of expressing transitional thinking and the implementation of an axiological picture of the world: a goldfish (a symbol of deification of a miracle), an old man and an old woman (national archetypes, images of fairy-tale heroes), "Public Paradise", "Chungova Changa" (mythological codification, symbols of Paradise, resurrection of the soul), a hare (a symbol of a lost man in a crazy, insane world, a metaphor of a "little man"), a "dancing negrito" (a symbol of a "divine puppet", "a wonderful doll of the Gods"), a black beetle (a sign of an imminent meeting of heroes, a symbol of a lost soul, the semantics of crossing the semiotic border), a cat (a symbol of loneliness, wildness), "legs on a frosty window" (a symbol of a "little man").

Abstract. As the findings of many studies have shown, different aspects of children's home literacy environment are related to the development of their language competence. We designed the Home Literacy Environment Questionnaire (HLEQ) to evaluate the quality of different aspects of the home literacy environment. This paper presents the development of this instrument, including: (1) the construction of the instrument based on the theoretical background and findings about the relation between family environment and child language development; (2) examination of the construct validity of the HLEQ and (3) an evaluation of its empirical criterion validity through correlations with children's achievements on a language development scale and their storytelling ability. Language competence was assessed with a sample of 4-year-old children that attended a Slovenian preschool. Using factor analysis, five HLEQ factors were identified: Stimulation to use language, explanation (F1), Reading books to the child, visiting the library and puppet theater (F2), Joint activities and conversation (F3), Interactive reading (F4) and Zone-of-proximal-development stimulation (F5). The findings show that some aspects of the home literacy environment (F2, F4 and F5) are positively related to different measures of child language development at 4 years of age and also contribute to a prediction of child language competence. Four HLEQ factors (F1, F2, F3, and F5) were also positively related to maternal level of education.

"The Sub-Psychodrama: a New Dramatic Form by Jean-Luc Lagarce. It is exactly by a neologism of a “sub-psychodrama” that the playwright and French director Jean-Luc Lagarce (1957-1995) defined one of his plays. The similarities between psychodramatic practices and Lagarce’s dramatic works are obvious. As in the context of psychodramatic practice, Lagarce’s characters take on roles and identify with them from a carnal as well as linguistic point of view. The situation in which Lagarce’s characters meet is very close to that which is, among others, treated by psychodramatists: the dialogue is not initialized, the individuals are stuck in their reproaches and focus only on their own points of view. Lagarce’s characters use the theatricalization, the putting in voice of a dramatic text of one of them in order to launch the speech that awaited this moment of expression. The sub-psychodrama, while being a poetic and dramatic concept of Lagarce, reveals the dialogical malaise in the contemporary society that the sub-psychodrama quotes while highlighting the complex mechanisms of the intersubjective perception as well as the mechanisms of our individual and collective memory. Both reflective self-perception, which goes from oneself to oneself, and transitive perception, which goes from oneself to the other or from the other to oneself – in the context of a speech act. The sub-psychodrama presents itself, therefore, as a dialogical and perceptive field of battle where the spoken word is in search of its answer. The sub-psychodrama invented and developed by Lagarce puts the concept of paper beings – linguistic puppets – at the same level, while promoting the coalition of puppet theater and word drama. Keywords: Lagarce, contemporary French drama, word drama, psychodrama, sub-psychodrama. "

A incidência de fatores de risco relacionados a doenças cardiovasculares - como a obesidade - têm aumentado significativamente nas últimas décadas e, por isso, a necessidade urgente de ferramentas inovadoras como estratégia preventiva. Por outro lado, sabe-se que crianças adaptadas a um estilo de vida saudável são mais propensas a escolhas conscientes quando adultas. Assim, o objetivo do presente relato de experiência foi o de demonstrar como universitários, voluntários locais e a comunidade escolar interagem de forma harmônica a partir de uma ação unicamente extensionista e sistematicamente proposta. Quanto à metodologia empregada, foi utilizada a desenvolvida pelo programa “Little Hearts Changing Lives” (LHCL), a qual utiliza o conceito da Aprendizagem Criativa para a disseminação de informações em saúde, em parceria com universidades brasileiras e americanas. O manual elaborado pelo programa possibilita que universitários recriem e cocriem dinâmicas como o teatro de fantoches, utilizando poesia rimada e paródias. Portanto, os discentes foram orientados a elaborarem, em duplas, a implementação do programa em Baependi, Minas Gerais, utilizando a temática fisiologia cardiovascular. Desta forma, discentes de duas Universidades de Juiz de Fora (UFJF e UNIPAC-JF) tiveram a oportunidade de realizar ações educativas para 758 escolares, entre 6 e 12 anos de idade, matriculadas em escolas do município. Concluímos que o público infantil desta comunidade se encontra receptivo a ações como as empregadas neste projeto de extensão. E, ainda, que intervenções junto à comunidade tem um papel importante especialmente para os universitários que participam ativamente destas ações. Palavras-chave: Aprendizagem criativa; Doenças Cardiovasculares; Medicina Preventiva; Promoção à Saúde; Obesidade infantil; Dieta; Atividade física Health education actions in Baependi schools, Minas Gerais state: creative universities in action Abstract: The incidence of risk factors related to cardiovascular diseases - such as obesity - has increased significantly in the recent decades and, therefore, the urgent need for innovative tools as a preventive strategy. On the other hand, it is known that children adapted to a healthy lifestyle are more prone to conscious choices as adults. Thus, the aim of the present experience report was to demonstrate how university students, local volunteers and the school community interact in a harmonious way in an exclusively extensionist project and systematically proposed action. Regarding the methodology it was applied that developed by the “Little Hearts Changing Lives” (LHCL) program, which uses the concept of Creative Learning for the dissemination of health information, in partnership with Brazilian and American universities. The program's manual enables university students to recreate and co-create dynamics as puppet theater using rhyming poetry and parodies. Therefore, the students were instructed to develop, in pairs, the implementation of the program in Baependi, Minas Gerais State (Brazil), using the theme cardiovascular physiology. Thus, students from two Universities of Juiz de Fora (UFJF and UNIPAC-JF) had the opportunity to carry out educational activities for 758 students, between 6 and 12 years old, enrolled in schools of that city. We conclude that the children of this community are receptive to actions such as those employed in this extension project. Also, community interventions play an important role especially for university students who actively participate in these actions. Keywords: Creative Learning; Cardiovascular diseases; Preventive Medicine; Health Promotion; Child obesity; Diet; Physical activity Acciones educativas en salud en las escuelas de Baependi, estado de Minas Gerais: universidades creativas en acción Resumen: A incidencia de factores de riesgo relacionados con enfermedades cardiovasculares, como la obesidad, ha aumentado significativamente en las últimas décadas y, por lo tanto, la necesidad urgente de herramientas innovadoras como estrategia preventiva. Por otro lado, se sabe que los niños adaptados a un estilo de vida saludable son más propensos a elecciones conscientes como adultos. Por lo tanto, el objetivo del presente informe de experiencia fue demostrar cómo los estudiantes universitarios, los voluntarios locales y la comunidad escolar interactúan de manera armoniosa en un proyecto exclusivamente extensionista y sistemáticamente propuesto. En cuanto a la metodología que se aplicó, fue desarrollada por el programa "Little Hearts Changing Lives" (LHCL), que utiliza el concepto de Aprendizaje Creativo para la difusión de información de salud, en colaboración con universidades brasileñas y estadounidenses. El manual del programa permite a los estudiantes universitarios recrear y cocrear dinámicas como teatro de marionetas utilizando poesías y parodias que riman. Por lo tanto, los estudiantes recibieron instrucciones de desarrollar, en parejas, la implementación del programa en Baependi, Minas Gerais (Brasil), utilizando el tema fisiología cardiovascular. Así, los alumnos de dos universidades de Juiz de Fora (UFJF y UNIPAC-JF) tuvieron la oportunidad de realizar actividades educativas para 758 alumnos, entre 6 y 12 años, matriculados en colegios de esa ciudad. Concluimos que los niños de esta comunidad son receptivos a acciones como las empleadas en este proyecto de extensión. Además, las intervenciones comunitarias juegan un papel importante, especialmente para los estudiantes universitarios que participan activamente en estas acciones. Palabras-clave: Aprendizaje creativo; Enfermedades cardiovasculares; Medicina preventiva; Promoción de la salud; Obesidad infantil; Dieta; Actividad física

Kesenian Wayang Beber yang terdapat di desa Kedompol, kecamatan Donorojo, kabupaten Pacitan Jawa Timur kurang mendapat sentuhan artistik, sehingga tidak mempunyai kepekaan terhadap konteks zamannya. Kondisi tersebut menjadikan masyarakat Pacitan khususnya, tidak mampu menikmati pertunjukan tersebut secara intens. Selain konteks dan selera yang berubah, pola kerjasama masyarakat juga bergeser dari semangat kebersamaan di pedesaan berubah menjadi pola kerja yang individualis seperti perkotaan. Hal tersebut menjadi salah satu penghalang bagi kesenian ini untuk berkembang sebab hanya dipertunjukkan dalam acara-acara ritual tertentu misalnya bersih desa atau selamatan saja.Untuk itu terobosan perlu dilakukan diantaranya adalah dengan menjemput penonton di ruang publik untuk menyaksikan pertunjukan tradisional ini. Selain itu perlu ada usaha-usaha tertentu untuk memperkenalkan kesenian ini agar tetap mengikuti konteks zamannya. Meskipun berlatarbelakang cerita masa lalu, namun harus mampu diterima oleh masyarakat sebagai bagian mereka sesuai zamannya dengan mengambil beberapa idiom serta peristiwa kekinian.Penciptaan teater Jaka Kembang Kuning adalah usaha untuk mengangkat kembali sebuah ide cerita yang semula disajikan dengan bertutur secara tradisional dalam bentuk pergelaran Wayang Beber yang memiliki berapa kelemahan terutama jika dilihat dari dinamika pertunjukannya yang lemah. Hal tersebut menjadikan kesenian ini tidak bisa menopang kehidupan kebutuhan hidup masyarakat pendukungnya dari sisi ekonomi maupun sosial. Untuk itu perlu adanya beberapa terobosan kreatifitas untuk mempertahankan eksistensinya, diantaranya adalah dengan membuka diri terhadap konteks pemirsanya.Beberapa usaha tersebut diantaranya adalah adengan memasukkan aksi teatrikal, tembang serta musik, warna agar memberikan peluang yang lebih luas bagi munculnya imajinasi di penonton dan rasa ketertarikan mereka pada kesenian ini. Seluruh rangkain pertunjukan akan membentuk teks tersendiri dengan pemaknaan yang terbuka dan lugas. Peran aktif pemirsa sangat dibutuhkan agar tercipta sebuah jalinan yang erat antara seniman, karya cipta serta penikmatnya. Dibutuhkan usaha-usaha yang lebih radikal semisal mengajak penonton menjadi bagian dari sebuah karya seni yang utuh agar menumbuhkan rasa memiliki terhadap kesenian ini. Creation theater Jaka Kembang Kuning is an attempt to revive an original story idea presented in the form traditionally tells Wayang Beber performances that have how many flaws, especially when viewed from the dynamics of the show. Visually traditional Wayang Beber becomes unattractive when compared with the puppet, puppet show, or other stage plays. This is the reason why Wayang Beber need to get a good touch broadly on the form and meaning of the play contained therein.Theatrical action, song and music, color and composition are used as a means of said stories provide a wider opportunity for the emergence of imagination in the audience. The entire string of performances will form a separate text with an open and straightforward meaning. Active role of the viewer is needed in order to create a strong braid between the artist, the copyrighted work as well as the audience. It takes the efforts to invite more radical audience to be part of an artwork intact. Breakthroughs such as involving the viewer to enter into the process or the show can be a separate option in the lifestyles of people who are too lazy to visit the venue. Invites viewers into direct contact with the expected performances more intimate communication.

The fifty-year actiities of the Zadar Puppet Theater started with the work of the actor and director Mile Gatara who created a recognizable puppetry style staging Croatian authors, mostly Vladimir Nazor, Vojmil Rabadan, Mladen Širola and Željko Hell. Abandoning the poetics of imitating the puppet theater, new authors and novel puppetry esthetics were established in the Zadar Puppet Theater. The authoress of this paper singles out Luka Paljetak whose works steered away from naive stories exlusively intended for children, making puppetry popular among the adult audience. The main puppetry marks of the novel puppetry esthetics created in the Zadar Puppet Theater were rhythmic motion and music, while speech, otherwise a dominant mark of the actor theater, was less pronounced. The authoress finds puppetry marks in the older Croatian literature texts which had been staged as puppet plays, addressing the issue of why it was in Zadar that the puppet plays Muke svete Margarite, Judita and Planine had been staged. THE

The author refers to the fact that since 1998 light designers have been considered artists, and their names are inevitably mentioned in theater leaflets and posters. The author of this paper portrayed Ivo Nižić (Zadar Puppet Theater) as one of six famous light designers in Croatia. The starting point of the research are the reflections of Swiss set designer Adolphe Appia, who provided esthetic and dramatic role to stage light. The author analyzed his reflections mentioned in the literature dealing with set design, and sorted the basic meanings and role of the light in theater plays. The author also singled out Croatian set designers Ljubo Babić, Boško Rašica and Aleksandar Augustinčić, who paid particular attention to stage light. The paper also includes a historical preview of stage light in Zadar Puppet Theater. In 1975, the screen was removed from Zadar puppet scene thanks to Luko Paljetak and Branko Stojaković, so the stage area and stage light became one stage being. The light became a puppet, because a puppet is everything, and everything is a puppet – those were the words of Paljetak and Stojaković. At that time, Ivo Nižić started working at Zadar Puppet Theater and he started creating the art of stage light by learning from the great masters of puppet scene.

The effectiveness of the puppet theater in developing the abilities of third-grade primary students linguistically Summary. This study aimed to know the effectiveness of the Puppet Theater (puppet theater) to develop linguistically the capabilities of third primary students. The researcher used the experimental approach, the study sample consisted of third primary students (50) male and female students, and the study showed the following results: Identifying the effectiveness of teaching through the puppet theater in developing Arabic language skills (reading, writing, speaking, listening) at Third grade students, there are statistically significant differences at the level between the mean levels of the control group and the experimental group in the measurement (pre and post) of the total score for language skills tests that are attributed to the effectiveness of teaching through the puppet theater, achieving a high degree of effectiveness in teaching by theater (puppet) method To enable students to have four Arabic language skills. There are also statistically significant differences at a level between the arithmetic mean for the experimental group and the control group in developing Arabic language skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) and they were in favor of the experimental group. The researcher recommended the following: The need for vocational preparation for some basic education teachers through holding training courses on work and school theater performance and how to communicate and deal with that, because the lack of a competent teacher leads to a failure of theater activity. And the need to allocate hours in the educational curriculum for the theater on a weekly basis, to least two hours. Requesting the competent authorities to include theater education in school curricula.

Puppet-character as a primary means of expression in puppetry is a self-sufficient medium in both education and training. Thus the puppet-character as a permanent and temporary member of the educational group is highly effective in the educational process of pre-school and primary school levels and is also stimulating, in terms of creativity, for the students – future educators and teachers. The paper summarizes many years of individual experience of a number of educators and teachers, as well as of the students from the Faculty of Education of Zagreb – Department of Petrinja, trained in puppetry. Both for educators and teachers, in their daily work with children, and for students, certain puppet-characters are carriers, and the tellers, of separate and related educational, problem-solving and instructional contents. In this procedure, by educators and teachers previously designed and played puppet plays and etudes serve as the starting point for the problem-educational processes or interdisciplinary natural science and verbal-artistic educational and instructional activities. After an introductory starting point, further educational or problem solving process with a particular content or theme is realised in individual and group work with all members of the educational group. In this process, the topic (content or problem) is introduced in detail, its various aspects are perceived, it is questioned and, finally, an acceptable attitude is investigated and selected, or an acceptable solution, if the topic is related to the eventual problem. A similar process is the one of educational or teaching content, when the course content is presented by a puppet play, and is repeated through individual and group etudes and plays in different variations; also, the adopted level of knowledge, already applied through the medium of puppet-character, is tested and evaluated. The paper analyses the puppet-characters as permanent and temporary members of the educational groups of various kinds. The human characters are Pero – six year old boy, Tip – a security guard, Sonja – a student from abroad and Mara – a milkmaid; animal character is Skakač – the frog and Fairy Mila is a fantastic creature. Those puppet-characters come in different forms: of hand puppets, rod puppets, table puppets or flat puppets.

The article highlights the diversity of Alexei Prokopovich Chugyu`s talent as a teacher, literary critic, playwright. It reveales his pedagogical skill secrets, which are primarily shown in expressive, emotional teaching methods, stage temperament, creative energy, sincere taste of humor, high professionalism, boundless devotion to the chosen case and special love for the students. The article focuses attention on his interesting in theater art, in particular he was actively involved in concerts of rural amateur groups, performing his reading of artistic works and also declared about himself as an unrivaled actor of amateur groups, in particular, student groups that performed theatrical productions by classics of Russian and Ukrainian literature and their plays. Speaking about the Alexei Chugyu`s pedagogical talent, the article stated that Chugyu performed a lot of public tasks, in particular he was dean`s deputy director of the philological faculty, when he was a teacher and subsequently was assistant professor of faculty of Ukrainian literature history . It was found that while being on the position as a teacher, and later as a professor of history in the Ukrainian literature department, he performed a number of public tasks, in particular, he was Deputy Dean and Acting Dean of the Philological Faculty of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. There was defined range of scientific interests focused on iconic figures in the history of Ukrainian literature like I. Karpenko-Karyi, T. Shevchenko, G. Kvitka-Osnovyanenko and O. Gonchar, writers whose works he admired through his life and who contributed the formation of his aesthetic tastes, love for art in general, words in particular and the choice of a philologist's profession. It was noted that Alexei Chugyu successfully combines teaching and scientific work with artistic creativity, in particular he declared about himself as an unrivaled playwright in the literary field. There were emphasized main directions in dramatic discourse, in particular political, biographical and experimental ones. Also there were emphasized that Chugyu-playwright is focus on child characters psychology. Admiring the puppet theater as a kind of comedy development of reality, Alexei Prokopovich carried out his own artistic experiment, which gave plays for young readers and spectators as a result.

She leant lazily across the picnic hamper and reached for my hearing aid in my open-palmed hand. I jerked away from her, batting her hand away from mine. The glare of the summer sun blinded me. I struck empty air. Her tendril-fingers seized the beige seashell curve of my hearing aid and she lifted the cargo of sound towards her eyes. She peered at the empty battery-cage before flicking it open and shut as if it was a cigarette lighter, as if she could spark hearing-life into this trick of plastic and metal that held no meaning outside of my ear. I stared at her. A band of horror tightened around my throat, strangling my shout: ‘Don’t do that!’ I clenched my fist around the new battery that I had been about to insert into my hearing aid and imagined it speeding like a bullet towards her heart. This dream arrived as I researched my anthology of memoir-style essays on deafness, The Art of Being. I had already been reflecting and writing for several years about my relationship with my deaf-self and the impact of my deafness on my life, but I remained uneasy about writing about my deaf-life. I’ve lived all my adult life entirely in the hearing world, and so recasting myself as a deaf woman with something pressing to say about deaf people’s lives felt disturbing. The urgency to tell my story and my anxiety to contest certain assumptions about deafness were real, but I was hampered by diffidence. The dream felt potent, as if my deaf-self was asserting itself, challenging my hearing persona. I was the sole deaf child in a family of five muddling along in a weatherboard war commission house at The Grange in Brisbane during the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties. My father’s resume included being in the army during World War Two, an official for the boxing events at the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games and a bookie with a gift for telling stories. My mother had spent her childhood on a cherry orchard in Young, worked as a nurse in war-time Sydney and married my father in Townsville after a whirlwind romance on Magnetic Island before setting up home in Brisbane. My older sister wore her dark hair in thick Annie-Oakley style plaits and my brother took me on a hike along the Kedron Brook one summer morning before lunchtime. My parents did not know of any deaf relatives in their families, and my sister and brother did not have any friends with deaf siblings. There was just me, the little deaf girl. Most children are curious about where they come from. Such curiosity marks their first foray into sexual development and sense of identity. I don’t remember expressing such curiosity. Instead, I was diverted by my mother’s story of her discovery that I was deaf. The way my mother tells the story, it is as if I had two births with the date of the diagnosis of my deafness marking my real arrival, over-riding the false start of my physical birth three years earlier. Once my mother realized that I was deaf, she was able to get on with it, the ‘it’ being to defy the inevitability of a constrained life for her deaf child. My mother came out swinging; by hook or by crook, her deaf daughter was going to learn to speak and to be educated and to take her place in the hearing world and to live a normal life and that was that. She found out about the Commonwealth Acoustics Laboratory (now known as Australian Hearing Services) where, after I completed a battery of auditory tests, I was fitted with a hearing aid. This was a small metal box, to be worn in a harness around my body, with a long looping plastic cord connected to a beige ear-mould. An instrument for piercing silence, it absorbed and conveyed sounds, with those sounds eventually separating themselves out into patterns of words and finally into strings of sentences. Without my hearing aid, if I am concentrating, and if the sounds are made loudly, I am aware of the sounds at the deeper end of the scale. Sometimes, it’s not so much that I can hear them; it’s more that I know that those sounds are happening. My aural memory of the deep-register sounds helps me to “hear” them, much like the recollection of any tune replays itself in your imagination. With and without my hearing aids, if I am not watching the source of those sounds – for example, if the sounds are taking place in another room or even just behind me – I am not immediately able to distinguish whether the sounds are conversational or musical or happy or angry. I can only discriminate once I’ve established the rhythm of the sounds; if the rhythm is at a tearing, jagged pace with an exaggerated rise and fall in the volume, I might reasonably assume that angry words are being had. I cannot hear high-pitched sounds at all, with and without my hearing aids: I cannot hear sibilants, the “cees” and “esses” and “zeds”. I cannot hear those sounds which bounce or puff off from your lips, such as the letters “b” and “p”; I cannot hear that sound which trampolines from the press of your tongue against the back of your front teeth, the letter “t”. With a hearing-aid I can hear and discriminate among the braying, hee-hawing, lilting, oohing and twanging sounds of the vowels ... but only if I am concentrating, and if I am watching the source of the sounds. Without my hearing aid, I might also hear sharp and sudden sounds like the clap of hands or crash of plates, depending on the volume of the noise. But I cannot hear the ring of the telephone, or the chime of the door bell, or the urgent siren of an ambulance speeding down the street. My hearing aid helps me to hear some of these sounds. I was a pupil in an oral-deaf education program for five years until the end of 1962. During those years, I was variously coaxed, dragooned and persuaded into the world of hearing. I was introduced to a world of bubbles, balloons and fingers placed on lips to learn the shape, taste and feel of sounds, their push and pull of air through tongue and lips. By these mechanics, I gained entry to the portal of spoken, rather than signed, speech. When I was eight years old, my parents moved me from the Gladstone Road School for the Deaf in Dutton Park to All Hallows, an inner-city girls’ school, for the start of Grade Three. I did not know, of course, that I was also leaving my world of deaf friends to begin a new life immersed in the hearing world. I had no way of understanding that this act of transferring me from one school to another was a profound statement of my parents’ hopes for me. They wanted me to have a life in which I would enjoy all the advantages and opportunities routinely available to hearing people. Like so many parents before them, ‘they had to find answers that might not, for all they knew, exist . . . How far would I be able to lead a ‘normal’ life? . . . How would I earn a living? You can imagine what forebodings weighed on them. They could not know that things might work out better than they feared’ (Wright, 22). Now, forty-four years later, I have been reflecting on the impact of that long-ago decision made on my behalf by my parents. They made the right decision for me. The quality of my life reflects the rightness of their decision. I have enjoyed a satisfying career in social work and public policy embedded in a life of love and friendships. This does not mean that I believe that my parents’ decision to remove me from one world to another would necessarily be the right decision for another deaf child. I am not a zealot for the cause of oralism despite its obvious benefits. I am, however, stirred by the Gemini-like duality within me, the deaf girl who is twin to the hearing persona I show to the world, to tell my story of deafness as precisely as I can. Before I can do this, I have to find that story because it is not as apparent to me as might be expected. In an early published memoir-essay about my deaf girlhood, I Hear with My Eyes (in Schulz), I wrote about my mother’s persistence in making sure that I learnt to speak rather than sign, the assumed communication strategy for most deaf people back in the 1950s. I crafted a selection of anecdotes, ranging in tone, I hoped, from sad to tender to laugh-out-loud funny. I speculated on the meaning of certain incidents in defining who I am and the successes I have enjoyed as a deaf woman in a hearing world. When I wrote this essay, I searched for what I wanted to say. I thought, by the end of it, that I’d said everything that I wanted to say. I was ready to move on, to write about other things. However, I was delayed by readers’ responses to that essay and to subsequent public speaking engagements. Some people who read my essay told me that they liked its fresh, direct approach. Others said that they were moved by it. Friends were curious and fascinated to get the inside story of my life as a deaf person as it has not been a topic of conversation or inquiry among us. They felt that they’d learnt something about what it means to be deaf. Many responses to my essay and public presentations had relief and surprise as their emotional core. Parents have cried on hearing me talk about the fullness of my life and seem to regard me as having given them permission to hope for their own deaf children. Educators have invited me to speak at parent education evenings because ‘to have an adult who has a hearing impairment and who has developed great spoken language and is able to communicate in the community at large – that would be a great encouragement and inspiration for our families’ (Email, April 2007). I became uncomfortable about these responses because I was not sure that I had been as honest or direct as I could have been. What lessons on being deaf have people absorbed by reading my essay and listening to my presentations? I did not set out to be duplicitous, but I may have embraced the writer’s aim for the neatly curved narrative arc at the cost of the flinty self-regarding eye and the uncertain conclusion. * * * Let me start again. I was born deaf at a time, in the mid 1950s, when people still spoke of the ‘deaf-mute’ or the ‘deaf and dumb.’ I belonged to a category of children who attracted the gaze of the curious, the kind, and the cruel with mixed results. We were bombarded with questions we could either not hear and so could not answer, or that made us feel we were objects for exploration. We were the patronized beneficiaries of charitable picnics organized for ‘the disadvantaged and the handicapped.’ Occasionally, we were the subject of taunts, with words such as ‘spastic’ being speared towards us as if to be called such a name was a bad thing. I glossed over this muddled social response to deafness in my published essay. I cannot claim innocence as my defence. I knew I was glossing over it but I thought this was right and proper: after all, why stir up jagged memories? Aren’t some things better left unexpressed? Besides, keep the conversation nice, I thought. The nature of readers’ responses to my essay provoked me into a deeper exploration of deafness. I was shocked by the intensity of so many parents’ grief and anxiety about their children’s deafness, and frustrated by the notion that I am an inspiration because I am deaf but oral. I wondered what this implied about my childhood deaf friends who may not speak orally as well as I do, but who nevertheless enjoy fulfilling lives. I was stunned by the admission of a mother of a five year old deaf son who, despite not being able to speak, has not been taught how to Sign. She said, ‘Now that I’ve met you, I’m not so frightened of deaf people anymore.’ My shock may strike the average hearing person as naïve, but I was unnerved that so many parents of children newly diagnosed with deafness were grasping my words with the relief of people who have long ago lost hope in the possibilities for their deaf sons and daughters. My shock is not directed at these parents but at some unnameable ‘thing out there.’ What is going on out there in the big world that, 52 years after my mother experienced her own grief, bewilderment, anxiety and quest to forge a good life for her little deaf daughter, contemporary parents are still experiencing those very same fears and asking the same questions? Why do parents still receive the news of their child’s deafness as a death sentence of sorts, the death of hope and prospects for their child, when the facts show – based on my own life experiences and observations of my deaf school friends’ lives – that far from being a death sentence, the diagnosis of deafness simply propels a child into a different life, not a lesser life? Evidently, a different sort of silence has been created over the years; not the silence of hearing loss but the silence of lost stories, invisible stories, unspoken stories. I have contributed to that silence. For as long as I can remember, and certainly for all of my adult life, I have been careful to avoid being identified as ‘a deaf person.’ Although much of my career was taken up with considering the equity dilemmas of people with a disability, I had never assumed the mantle of advocacy for deaf people or deaf rights. Some of my early silence about deaf identity politics was consistent with my desire not to shine the torch on myself in this way. I did not want to draw attention to myself by what I did not have, that is, less hearing than other people. I thought that if I lived my life as fully as possible in the hearing world and with as little fuss as possible, then my success in blending in would be eloquence enough. If I was going to attract attention, I wanted it to be on the basis of merit, on what I achieved. Others would draw the conclusions that needed to be drawn, that is, that deaf people can take their place fully in the hearing world. I also accepted that if I was to be fully ‘successful’ – and I didn’t investigate the meaning of that word for many years – in the hearing world, then I ought to isolate myself from my deaf friends and from the deaf culture. I continued to miss them, particularly one childhood friend, but I was resolute. I never seriously explored the possibility of straddling both worlds, despite the occasional invitation to do so. For example, one of my childhood deaf friends, Damien, visited me at my parents’ home once, when we were both still in our teens. He was keen for me to join him in the Deaf Theatre, but I couldn’t muster the emotional dexterity that I felt this required. Instead, I let myself to be content to hear news of my childhood deaf friends through the grape-vine. This was, inevitably, a patchy process that lent itself to caricature. Single snippets of information about this person or that person ballooned into portrait-size depictions of their lives as I sketched the remaining blanks of their history with my imagination as my only tool. My capacity to be content with my imagination faltered. * * * Despite the construction of public images of deafness around the highly visible performance of hand-signed communication, the ‘how-small-can-we-go?’ advertorials of hearing aids and the cochlear implant with its head-worn speech processor, deafness is often described as ‘the invisible disability.’ My own experience bore this out. I became increasingly self-conscious about the singularity of my particular success, moderate in the big scheme of things though that may be. I looked around me and wondered ‘Why don’t I bump into more deaf people during the course of my daily life?’ After all, I am not a recluse. I have broad interests. I have travelled a lot, and have enjoyed a policy career for some thirty years, spanning the three tiers of government and scaling the competitive ladder with a reasonable degree of nimbleness. Such a career has got me out and about quite a bit: up and down the Queensland coast and out west, down to Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide and Hobart, and to the United Kingdom. And yet, not once in those thirty years did I get to share an office or a chance meeting or a lunch break with another deaf person. The one exception took place in the United Kingdom when I attended a national conference in which the keynote speaker was the Chairman of the Audit Commission, a man whose charisma outshines his profound deafness. After my return to Australia from the United Kingdom, a newspaper article about an education centre for deaf children in a leafy suburb of Brisbane, prompted me into action. I decided to investigate what was going on in the world of education for deaf children and so, one warm morning in 2006, I found myself waiting in the foyer for the centre’s clinical director. I flicked through a bundle of brochures and newsletters. They were loaded with images of smiling children wearing cochlear implants. Their message was clear: a cochlear implant brought joy, communication and participation in all that the world has to offer. This seemed an easy miracle. I had arrived with an open mind but now found myself feeling unexpectedly tense, as if I was about to walk a high-wire without the benefit of a safety net. Not knowing the reason for my fear, I swallowed it and smiled at the director in greeting upon her arrival. She is physically a small person but her energy is large. Her passion is bracing. That morning, she was quick to assert the power of cochlear implants by simply asking me, ‘Have you ever considered having an implant?’ When I shook my head, she looked at me appraisingly, ‘I’m sure you’d benefit from it’ before ushering me into a room shining with sun-dappled colour and crowded with a mess of little boys and girls. The children were arrayed in a democracy of shorts, shirts, and sandals. Only the occasional hair-ribbon or newly pressed skirt separated this girl from that boy. Some young mothers and fathers, their faces stretched with tension, stood or sat around the room’s perimeter watching their infant children. The noise in the room was orchestral, rising and falling to a mash of shouts, cries and squeals. A table had been set with several plastic plates in which diced pieces of browning apple, orange slices and melon chunks swam in a pond of juice. Some small children clustered around it, waiting to be served. When they finished their morning fruit, they were rounded up to sit at the front of the room, before a teacher poised with finger-puppets of ducks. I tripped over a red plastic chair – its tiny size designed to accommodate an infant’s bottom and small-sausage legs – and lowered myself onto it to take in the events going on around me. The little boys and girls laughed merrily as they watched their teacher narrate the story of a mother duck and her five baby ducks. Her hands moved in a flurry of duck-billed mimicry. ‘“Quack! Quack! Quack!” said the mother duck!’ The parents trilled along in time with the teacher. As I watched the children at the education centre that sunny morning, I saw that my silence had acted as a brake of sorts. I had, for too long, buried the chance to understand better the complex lives of deaf people as we negotiate the claims and demands of the hearing world. While it is true that actions speak louder than words, the occasional spoken and written word must surely help things along a little. I also began to reflect on the apparent absence of the inter-generational transfer of wisdom and insights born of experience rather than academic studies. Why does each new generation of parents approach the diagnosis of their newborn child’s disability or deafness with such intensity of fear, helplessness and dread for their child’s fate? I am not querying the inevitability of parents experiencing disappointment and shock at receiving unexpected news. I accept that to be born deaf means to be born with less than perfect hearing. All the same, it ought not to be inevitable that parents endure sustained grief about their child’s prospects. They ought to be illuminated as quickly as possible about all that is possible for their child. In particular, they ought to be encouraged to enjoy great hopes for their child. I mused about the power of story-telling to influence attitudes. G. Thomas Couser claims that ‘life writing can play a significant role in changing public attitudes about deafness’ (221) but then proceeds to cast doubt on his own assertion by later asking, ‘to what degree and how do the extant narratives of deafness rewrite the discourse of disability? Indeed, to what degree and how do they manage to represent the experience of deafness at all?’ (225). Certainly, stories from the Deaf community do not speak for me as my life has not been shaped by the framing of deafness as a separate linguistic and cultural entity. Nor am I drawn to the militancy of identity politics that uses terms such as ‘oppression’ and ‘oppressors’ to deride the efforts of parents and educators to teach deaf children to speak (Lane; Padden and Humphries). This seems to be unhelpfully hostile and assumes that deafness is the sole arbitrating reason that deaf people struggle with understanding who they are. It is the nature of being human to struggle with who we are. Whether we are deaf, migrants, black, gay, mentally ill – or none of these things – we are all answerable to the questions: ‘who am I and what is my place in the world?’ As I cast around for stories of deafness and deaf people with which I could relate, I pondered on the relative infrequency of deaf characters in literature, and the scarcity of autobiographies by deaf writers or biographies of deaf people by either deaf or hearing people. I also wondered whether written stories of deafness, memoirs and fiction, shape public perceptions or do they simply respond to existing public perceptions of deafness? As Susan DeGaia, a deaf academic at California State University writes, ‘Analysing the way stories are told can show us a lot about who is most powerful, most heard, whose perspective matters most to society. I think if we polled deaf/Deaf people, we would find many things missing from the stories that are told about them’ (DeGaia). Fighting my diffidence in staking out my persona as a ‘deaf woman’ and mustering the ‘conviction as to the importance of what [I have] to say, [my] right to say it’ (Olsen 27), I decided to write The Art of Being Deaf, an anthology of personal essays in the manner of reflective memoirs on deafness drawing on my own life experiences and supported by additional research. This presented me with a narrative dilemma because my deafness is just one of several life-events by which I understand myself. I wanted to find fresh ways of telling stories of deaf experiences while fashioning my memoir essays to show the texture of my life in all its variousness. A.N.Wilson’s observation about the precarious insensitivity of biographical writing was my guiding pole-star: the sense of our own identity is fluid and tolerant, whereas our sense of the identity of others is always more fixed and quite often edges towards caricature. We know within ourselves that we can be twenty different persons in a single day and that the attempt to explain our personality is doomed to become a falsehood after only a few words ... . And yet ... works of literature, novels and biographies depend for their aesthetic success precisely on this insensitive ability to simplify, to describe, to draw lines around another person and say, ‘This is she’ or ‘This is he.’ I have chosen to explore my relationship with my deafness through the multiple-threads of writing several personal essays as my story-telling vehicle rather than as a single-thread autobiography. The multiple-thread approach to telling my stories also sought to avoid the pitfalls of identity narrative in which I might unwittingly set myself up as an exemplar of one sort or another, be it as a ‘successful deaf person’ or as an ‘angry militant deaf activist’ or as ‘a deaf individual in denial attempting to pass as hearing.’ But in seeking to avoid these sorts of stories, what autobiographical story am I trying to tell? Because, other than being deaf, my life is not otherwise especially unusual. It is pitted here with sadness and lifted there with joy, but it is mostly a plateau held stable by the grist of daily life. Christopher Jon Heuer recognises this dilemma when he writes, ‘neither autobiography nor biography nor fiction can survive without discord. Without it, we are left with boredom. Without it, what we have is the lack of a point, a theme and a plot’ (Heuer 196). By writing The Art of Being Deaf, I am learning more than I have to teach. In the absence of deaf friends or mentors, and in the climate of my own reluctance to discuss my concerns with hearing people who, when I do flag any anxieties about issues arising from my deafness tend to be hearty and upbeat in their responses, I have had to work things out for myself. In hindsight, I suspect that I have simply ignored most of my deafness-related difficulties, leaving the heavy lifting work to my parents, teachers, and friends – ‘for it is the non-deaf who absorb a large part of the disability’ (Wright, 5) – and just got on with things by complying with what was expected of me, usually to good practical effect but at the cost of enriching my understanding of myself and possibly at the cost of intimacy. Reading deaf fiction and memoirs during the course of this writing project is proving to be helpful for me. I enjoy the companionability of it, but not until I got over my fright at seeing so many documented versions of deaf experiences, and it was a fright. For a while there, it was like walking through the Hall of Mirrors in Luna Park. Did I really look like that? Or no, perhaps I was like that? But no, here’s another turn, another mirror, another face. Spinning, twisting, turning. It was only when I stopped searching for the right mirror, the single defining portrait, that I began to enjoy seeing my deaf-self/hearing-persona experiences reflected in, or challenged by, what I read. Other deaf writers’ recollections are stirring into fresh life my own buried memories, prompting me to re-imagine them so that I can examine my responses to those experiences more contemplatively and less reactively than I might have done originally. We can learn about the diversity of deaf experiences and the nuances of deaf identity that rise above the stock symbolic scripts by reading authentic, well-crafted stories by memoirists and novelists. Whether they are hearing or deaf writers, by providing different perspectives on deafness, they have something useful to say, demonstrate and illustrate about deafness and deaf people. I imagine the possibility of my book, The Art of Being Deaf, providing a similar mentoring role to other deaf people and families.References Couser, G. Thomas. Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disablity, and Life Writing. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997. Heuer, Christopher Jon. ‘Deafness as Conflict and Conflict Component.’ Sign Language Studies 7.2 (Winter 2007): 195-199. Lane, Harlan. When the Mind Hears: A History of the Deaf. New York: Random House, 1984 Olsen, Tillie. Silences. New York: Delta/Seymour Lawrence. 1978. Padden, Carol, and Tom Humphries. Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998. Schulz, J. (ed). A Revealed Life. Sydney: ABC Books and Griffith Review. 2007 Wilson, A.N. Incline Our Hearts. London: Penguin Books. 1988. Wright, David. Deafness: An Autobiography. New York: Stein and Day, 1969.