This is Dialogue’s second article in our series about Objects with Objectives at the ASSITEJ Cradle of Creativity 2017 – to see our first post, a teaser video from their workshops, please click here.
Objects with Objectives was an exciting week of international collaboration between practitioners of Applied Theatre and Puppetry. The Cradle of Creativity festival offered a wonderful platform for the symposium to initiate dialogue about how Puppetry could be utilised in Community Performance contexts. Facilitating these discussions was David Grant, Senior Lecturer in Drama at Queen’s University Belfast, who took the time to speak with me afterwards to explain the goals of the project (4 minutes):
The final session culminated in presentations and reflections from various groups such as the Handspring Puppet Company (South Africa), La Liga Teatro Elástico (Mexico) and the Dead Puppet Society (Australia). After presentations from each company, everyone was invited to join in a discussion which explored how ideas of ‘voice’ are negotiated when working with community groups. Exploring the role that puppets can play in such settings, the question of whether puppets have the potential to become brokers of agency was considered and debated. Overall, the discussion was rich with new ideas and marked an exciting beginning for the future of the International Symposium for Puppetry and Applied Drama.
