Puppets

Puppets are terrific therapeutic tools. Kids, especially, love puppets. Anything you can do with drama therapy, you can also do with puppets. Hand puppets and finger puppets are the most commonly used types of puppets.

Puppets provide more distance than directly embodied drama therapy. This makes it safe to "play" with content that is too powerful to touch directly. Puppets are aesthetically distanced and metaphoric by nature; puppets are much less embodied than drama therapy or dance, though more embodied than visual arts or creative writing. And puppets can be used to probe with a greater degree of holding and safety, because it's "just pretend."

Interventions

Most drama therapy interventions can be adapted for puppets. Here are a few puppet-specific ones:

Let the puppet talk: The client picks a puppet, and the therapist talks to the puppet. This is great with kids, it makes them feel safe.
Puppet therapist: The therapist uses puppets to talk to the client. Again, a great way to work with a kid who's reluctant or fearful.
Put on a show: The client, or a group of clients, creates a puppet show. This is similar to improvised storytelling.
Show what happened: use puppets (or dolls) to show what happened. Very gentle way of getting facts about traumatic events from kids.

Personal tools

Puppets

Interventions