Now Performing ...

Sleeping Beauty

with
Christine Assange - Storyteller and Puppeteer

Performance - 45 minutes

A visually beautiful original production of this much loved traditional story, told in authentic fairytale language and enhanced by sound effects and classical music. Features 12 European style handcrafted papier maché puppets, richly costumed, performing within the enchanted world of castle turrets and velvet. The performance is live and interactive.

Included is an activity sheet and a complimentary set of 20 performance photos to make a story book reader.

For ages 4 - 8 years.

Puppetry Education (schools and pre schools, school holiday programs and libraries)

Talking to the Puppeteer - Following the performance - 30 Minutes
As a writer, designer, producer, puppet-maker and puppeteer, I am able to answer the many questions the children have about puppetry. During the interaction, they are introduced to artistic and theatrical concepts at their level of understanding.

Method - Questions and answers, demonstration and discussion and backstage tour.

"The Uses of Enchantment" - The Meaning and Importance of Fairytales

by Dr Bruno Bettelheim - Child Psychiatrist

Like all great art, fairytales both delight and instruct; their special genius is that they do so in terms which speak directly to children. Today, children no longer grow up within the security of an extended family or of a well-integrated community. Today, even more than in past times, the child needs the reassurance offered by the image of the isolated man who nevertheless is capable of achieving meaningful and rewarding relations with the world around him. He needs a moral education which subtly and by implication only, conveys to him the advantages of moral behaviour not through abstract ethical concepts but through that which seems tangibly right and therefore meaningful to him.

The child finds this kind of meaning through fairytales. True, on an overt level, fairytales teach little about the specific conditions of life in modern mass society. But fairytales carry important messages to the conscious, the preconscious and the unconscious mind, on whatever level each is functioning at the time. The message that fairytales get across to the child in manifold form is that a struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable, is an intrinsic part of human existence - but that if one does not shy away but steadfastly meets unexpected and often unjust hardships, one masters all obstacles and at the end emerges victorious.

The fairy story, although it may begin with the child's psychological state of mind - such as feelings of rejection when compared to siblings, like Cinderella's - never starts with his physical reality. The child who is familiar with fairytales understands that these speak to him in the language of symbols and not that of everyday reality. The deliberate vagueness of "Once upon a time ..." at the beginning of fairytales symbolizes that we are leaving the concrete world of ordinary reality. The fairytale launches into fantastic events. But however, big the detours - unlike the child's untutored mind, or a dream - the process of the story does not get lost. Having taken the child on a trip into a wondrous world, at its end of the tale returns the child to reality, in a most reassuring manner.

Children - normal and abnormal alike and at all levels of intelligence - find fairytales more satisfying than all other children's stories.

My hope is that a proper understanding of the unique merits of fairytales will induce parents and teachers to assign them once again to that central role in the life of the child they held for centuries.