Dutch children experience the creative explosion

Here in the Netherlands, the children of the International School of Amsterdam are completely engaged this week in the creative process of puppetry workshop activity, which we are focusing specifically on primary students this week.

I mistakingly thought it would be quite a challenge engaging the very young, while at the same time, holding their attention for any length of time in our ever-growing multi media fast-paced world. But I was so wrong. The kids are engaging in each step of the way.

We begin our days with some powerful Brain Gym activity to focus their brain and get them optimally engaged in the creative process. We then take them on a guided visualisation which calms them down into a more relaxed state, relieving any tention they might hold in their busy daily lives. This is in turn is followed with the paper work. It is here that the most incredible surprises emerge, when the kids are given the opportunity to shine in their own way. Even the most non-academic students often prove themselves best in this creative process - a time where there is no right or wrong way of doing the work, as long as they are expressing themselves in the way they want and completely engaged in the communication process. For more information about this work, please visit the website here!

I have a day off tomorrow to explore the newly opened Riyksmuseum in Amsterdam, before continuing the magic at the school on Friday.

Last puppet from "Puns en Doedie" kicks the bucket

Thatcher captured by the Spitting Image team in the eighties

The Iron Lady of British politics, Margaret Thatcher, the final performer in my nineteen-eighties political street satire, "Puns en Doedie Show" (Puppets Against Apartheid) finally passed into the world of the hereafter to reunite with her former oligarchs PW Botha and Ronald Reagan.

"When you've spent half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like the environment, it's exciting to have a real crisis on your hands." - Margaret Thatcher commenting on the Falkland Islands war in 1982. 

As I sit here in a library on Lake Geneva in Switzerland and reflect upon "the days of miracle and wonder" when we were all young and naive, trying in our own little way to make a dent in the Apartheid machine, not quite aware of the bigger picture and the collaboration of the triumvirate. And now the puppets have all finally been laid to rest, but the memories will remain vivid in my mind, as I recall the South African security police hurriedly taking notes at my street performances and being warned of this by the local newspaper reporter, Tony Jackman.

So let me wish Madame Thatcher well in her journeys in the hereafter and tell her it was fun manipulating her, even from the far away colonies, during the nineteen-eighties.

Sad day reflecting on the life of Jane Henson

It is indeed a sad day when a beloved figure of World Puppetry leaves us. Jane Henson was adored by puppeteers worldwide as a generous propagator of our esteemed art.  Jane, wife of the late muppet-master, Jim Henson, passed away yesterday of cancer at their family home in Greenwich, Connecticut, USA.

As I head off today to begin a six-week European workshop tour, I fell sad but grateful to have been part of an all embracing community that reached out and touch the hearts and minds of our small puppetry community in every corner of this tiny planet. Fare thee well Jane Henson.