Puppets in Entertainment-Education: Universal Principles and African Performance Traditions as a Model for Interaction

The paper explores the use of puppetry in Entertainment-Education. The author finds that qualities of traditional African theatre – which blend the puppet as visual symbol with other performance disciplines (song, dance and music) – and the universal puppetry principles of motion, representation, reduction, distortion, exaggeration and simplification which interact to create a larger than life and intensified form of communication, can be incorporated into
entertainment-education to create meaningful interaction between performers and their audiences.

According to the paper, intellectual and emotional involvement of spectators can be stimulated when the inherent nature of the puppet and the distinctive principals of puppetry are applied in performance , and a number of confining concepts are abandoned. The puppet is by nature a visual metaphor and symbol which has the ability to entertain and educate any age group and people at different levels of literacy. The impact of the performance and therefore the intellectual and emotional response of the audience, always relies on the effective application of the distinctive principals of the art form: visual action as the essence of puppetry, simplification, exaggeration, and representation.

The author states that puppetry does not need to exist as a medium on its own, and when confining concepts are discarded the fascinating inter-relationship between live edutainer, masked edutainer, puppet and live audience in a single performance can be explored to stimulate development and social progress. This concept of puppetry as an applied art correlates with indigenous performances in Sub-Saharan African countries where puppets, like other types of African sculpture from traditionally illiterate societies, are an essential means of communication in which symbolic images are part of multi-media performances in open-air communal spaces with no conceptual boundaries between the audience and the performers when they gather for festive entertainment which transfer socio-cultural messages.These performances are closely associated with play and are therefore open to any contemporary inventions that address anti-conventional social types often in a comic or satirical way. This openess to change, experimentation and innovation has the ability to mobilse and educate through entertainment.

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