 Have you ever watched a puppet show before? Are you familiar with the sound of music? Well, they have presented puppets there. Now, what is a puppet? A puppet is any inanimate object moved by a manipulator in front of an audience. It's actually communicating through objects. Now, this object can assume a personality or a dramatic persona and that persona can exist. Apparently detached from the exigencies of the real world. Now, what are the different types of puppets? The simplest is the finger puppet. So it's a puppet that you put onto your finger. So this one is made from a crochet. So you have a puppet and you move it with your finger. So that's the simplest type. Here is another example of a finger puppet and also this one. The moving eyes, put it on your finger and you also have a puppet. The next type is the hand puppet. So you put the puppet over your hand. So you have fingers to move the head and fingers to move the hands. So this is a hand puppet. So you have two faces. You have a happy face and a sad face. Now, a more popular kind of puppet is the muppet. If you watched Sesame Street or the muppet movie, then you would know what a muppet is. So this is Elmo and the main feature of a muppet is the moving mouth. That's why it's called a muppet. The next type is the rod puppet. So you would have rods to move the head so this is a rod puppet. Another kind is the shadow puppet. So it's a two-dimensional object. It is flat and you need a screen or a white cloth and you need a source of light so that you are able to project the shadow on the screen. This is the shadow puppet. And another example is the string puppet. You actually use strings to manipulate the puppet. It's also called the marionette. Another complicated type of puppet is the Japanese bunraku wherein you have three puppeteers moving a puppet. Now, puppetry is an ancient form of storytelling in many Asian countries. It's actually an expression of a popular and folk myth and culture. A most popular epic that is presented in puppet shows is the Ramayana from India. Our Asean neighbors have a very rich tradition of puppetry. From Brunei, we have paper puppets. From Cambodia, we have the big shadow puppets. From Indonesia, we have the wayangolik or what is known as the rod puppet and the wayang kulit or shadow puppet. From Laos, they have rod puppets. Malaysia also has the wayang kulit or the shadow puppets. Mi and Mar would have marionettes while Singapore would have marionettes and Chinese hand puppets. Thailand would have the rod puppet or the hun lacorn lek and the shadow puppets. Nang talung which is the smaller version and the nangyay which is similar to the Cambodian shadow puppets. And then Vietnam would have very popular water puppet as well as the rod and hand puppets. Now in the Philippines, we have a very short history of puppetry. The first reference was the Carillo when Jose Rizal did shadow plays like ang pagong atangchongo or the monkey and the turtle. And then the next reference would be the gigantes of Angono Rizal wherein you have a big puppet, you have a father, a mother and a child which go through the procession for the feast of San Clemente. Now puppetry became more popular in the 1970s with the introduction of Jim Henson's Muppet Show. So you have groups like the Philippine Information Agency, Alsa Balutan and other groups doing performances in the 70s using the Muppet Style of Muppet Tree. Tiatrong mulat ng Pilipinas was actually founded in 1977 and this was founded by Professor Emeritus Amelia Lapeña Bonifacio. She was inspired by the Japanese Bunrahu and the Indonesian Wayang Golek and Wayang Kulit. And we have several other groups like Anino Shadow Play Collective, Ventry Locust Artists like Oni Karkamo and Juan Lu. Now puppetry is spiritually powerful and emotionally evocative and highly intellectual. That's why it can be used not only for entertainment but also for education. Now how can it help in educating not only children but even young adults as well? We may see puppets as an extension of the self, allowing for freedom to explore other characters, how they look, behave, respond and feel. Sometimes when you have puppet shows and children use puppets to express themselves, it gives them confidence in speaking because the attention is focused not on the child or the speaker but on the puppet. Of course when you do puppet shows there is that enjoyment in watching shows because this is how children engage with their toys in playing. So they see the puppets as dolls or toys. It also brings to life and animates a situation which can then be broken down and discussed. So if you talk about literature then you can talk about how to create a short story or a short play and then come up with a puppet show. Puppetry can also engage observation and participation in situations with distance and having time to reflect. So you may be involved in the creation of the story but there's also some distance when you try to analyze what should we perform, what should the character be like, how should the character behave. And then it's also a puppetry can also help in giving purpose to the investigation of communication through presentation and shared assessment. Now since puppets can educate and entertain, we see the value of puppetry in the classroom. How is that possible? Let's look at this water bottle. So it's a water bottle. But how can you use this? How can you transform this into a puppet? So by mere movement of the water bottle then you can say that it's a ship or it's a fish or if it flies up to the sky it's a rocket ship. So with a mere water bottle you can create a lot of objects or a lot of puppets. You can put your design, you can cover it with art paper and transform it into something different. So you can use puppetry in the process or in the puppet making process. So children learn for example if you have a piece of literature you have a short story. So how can we present that story using puppetry? So the children analyze the story, identify the puppets, identify the scenery and then they can work on making the puppets. So here are some examples. This is one example of a homemade or puppet made out of toilet paper roll. So you have the toilet paper roll, you use a marker, you have a paper, you put them together and now you have a finger puppet. Or another way of doing it is you cover the toilet paper roll, you use crumpled paper as the head, you have the moving eyes, you have the yarn and then you use felt cloth and another piece of toilet paper roll and you now have another type of finger puppet. So the process in making the puppet is one way of also teaching a particular subject matter. For example, you want to talk about shapes. So looking at the materials, you have a round or a circle, then you may talk about the triangle and other shapes while working on the character for your puppet show. Another example of a homemade or easy to make puppet is this shadow puppet. So this one is made from x-ray film. But this one is different from the shadow puppet I presented earlier because light cannot go through the x-ray film. So this one will be one solid figure while the other one would have holes within the figure so you will see details in the shadow puppet. But this material is made from x-ray film and the straw. So this is your shadow puppet. While working on puppets, you can also develop use of words or discovering language. So what are the materials used for this rod puppet? So you have a sponge, you have buttons, you have a wig. The body of the puppet is made from a ladle and the dress is a towel and the hands are the spoon and the fork. So here you have a rod puppet. So you have rods to move the hands and the head. Now you can also discuss concepts in math when making puppets. So what do you need? For example, this string puppet, you have strings. So how long should the strings be? So you can talk about measurement. What shapes of body parts would you want on your puppet? So this one is round. Okay, you have a piece of cloth. So how long, how wide should the cloth be? And you have to make a t-bar so that the strings will be attached to the bar. So then you would have your marionette. So in the process of making puppets, you can talk about concepts in your subject matter. Now for example, you want to talk about recycling, then you emphasize the use of recyclable material. So you can talk about reduce, reuse and recycle in the process of puppet making. And the product will be your puppet show. Now the puppet show may be in the form of a short story or a short play. So you can create puppet shows for information campaigns. For example, if you want to talk about hand washing, then you can have characters, possibly animal characters, or if you want to have people characters, then you can create hand puppets who would talk about the proper way to wash your hands and reminders from children on how to keep their hands clean. So why use puppets in trying to teach or educate children or young adults? Since children and young adults are agents of change, they absorb information easily. And with the use of puppets, we're able to develop their imagination, creativity and resourcefulness. So through puppets, we can learn creatively, stimulate the brain and come up with unique solutions to various situations or problems in life. So I hope that you'll experiment and try to discover how magical and fun it is to learn with puppets. As I mentioned earlier, puppetry in Asia has a very long tradition. One of the most popular stories presented in puppet shows is the Indian epic Ramayana. In 2005, tiadrung mulat ng Pilipinas staged the Ramayana with puppets inspired by the Indonesian Wayang Golek and Wayang Kulit and the staging techniques of the Japanese Bunraku. The puppeteers were dressed in black to signify absence or nothingness. The puppet play Sita Atrama, Puppet Ramayana, was written and designed by University Professor Emeritus Amelia Lapeno Bonifacio with a brother and sister team of Cynthia Alexander and Joey Ayala who composed and arranged the melodies for the lyrics of the songs under the direction of yours truly. Here is how the story goes. The God Vishnu reincarnates himself as Prince Rama, the first son of King Dasarastra. To stop King Ravana from continuing his evil reign, young Prince Rama grows up to be a strong man and by his strength, he wins the love of Princess Sita. Before King Dasarastra is able to bestow the throne to Rama, his second wife Kaikei requests that he fulfills the two wishes he granted her in return for having saved his life during the war. Her first wish was to make his son Bharata, the crowned king and the second to banish Rama in the forest for 14 years. To honor his father's word, Rama consents and goes to the forest with Sita and his brother, Lakshmana. While Rama was in exile, the ogres Sorpanaka falls in love with him but he denies her. While they drive her away, Lakshmana cuts Sorpanaka's nose. Furious of being insulted and hurt, Sorpanaka demands her brother, King Ravana, to avenge her. Prince Rama and Prince Lakshmana team up with the monkey king Sugriva and the monkey general Hanuman. Together with the army of monkeys, Prince Rama and Prince Lakshmana face dangers that await then in King Ravana's kingdom. They save Princess Sita and return home on the 14th year of their exile. Prince Rama becomes king and leads the kingdom with Queen Sita by his side. In Diatrong mulat staging, this is the puppet Rama. And here is Sita. Now allow me to present a short song by Sita which tells what she felt when she first met Rama.