Tuesday 25 July 2017

The Broken Puppet: A Symposium on Puppetry, Disability, and Health

Corina Duyn, facilitator of the Life Outside the Box Puppetry project 
has been invited to give a talk about her experience of making puppets 
throughout her life and during illness, 
as well as sharing the empowering aspects she encountered 
during the creation of puppets with her fellow members of the 
Irish Wheelchair Association (IWA),
 at the upcoming international symposium 

The Broken Puppet: A Symposium on Puppetry, 

Disability, and Health


1st and 2nd of August 

at UCC, Cork, Ireland 

Connolly Complex (adjacent to the Granary Theatre) on Western Road, 
directly across from the River Lee Hotel. 
Rooms ConnA and ConnS4 will be signposted on either side of the building. 


Click HERE to register/book tickets


The Life Outside the Box film will be screened 
on 1st August during the Puppet festival in Cork
on the ground floor of the Village Hall.

Johnny Dwyer is ready to travel to Cork!!

Details from eventbrite
"The UNIMA Research Commission in collaboration with Cork Puppetry Festival, University College Cork, and Mary Immaculate College, is delighted to announce a two-day symposium exploring the ways puppetry intersects with disability and health. Academics and practice-based researchers will present papers, provocations, and presentations of practice-based research.
The emergence of a disability culture is difficult but tremendously liberating. Such a culture enables us to recognize the pressure to pretend to be normal for the oppressive and impossible- to -achieve hurdle which it is. Most importantly, this culture challenges our own prejudices about ourselves, as well as those of the non-disabled culture.”- Jenny Morris

The object offers itself to the individual as an extension of his being in the surrounding universe, and augmented affirmation of his total existence.” - Roger Daniel Bensky"



image: Research practice based on "Pupa" by Emma Fisher.
Ceramic puppet made in collaboration with Sheila Stone. Photo Emma Mac.
Registration for the event, held on the 1st and 2nd of August at UCC, Cork, can be done HERE


Schedule of speakers rom the UNIMA website:

Tuesday August 1st 2017
  • 12.30 Registration
  • 1.15 Welcome and introduction (Cariad Astles)
  • 1.35 Keynote: Dr Melissa Trimingham: Puppetry and autism
WELLBEING PANEL
  • 2.25 Moira Jenkins: Puppetry as a human right: relational citizenship
  • 2.50 Andrea Markovits: Puppet therapy and traumatic memory in Chile post-dictatorship
  • 3.10 coffee
  • 3.30 Yasuko Senda: Heart-warming Smile Puppet Association
  • 3.55 Oscar Goldszmidt: Social inclusion through puppetry: a case study with cerebral palsy
  • 4.20 Caroline Astell-Burt: Closeness, touching and kinaesthesia
  • 4.45 Antje Wegener: Therapeutic puppetry in Germany
  • 5.05 Questions and discussion
Wednesday August 2nd
  • 9.00 Registration
  • 9.30 Keynote: Dr Persephone Sextou: Puppetry in hospitals, clinics and healthcare settings
Disability panel
  • 10.35 Emma Fisher: The Broken Puppet: puppetry and disability
  • 11.00 Corina Duyn: Life outside the box: puppetry, ME and disability
  • 11.25 Roberto Ferreira De Silva: puppetry with disabled participants
  • 11.45 Questions and discussion
Hospitals and care settings panel
  • 1.10 Riku Laakkonen: Performing objects in palliative care
  • 1.35 Matt Jennings: Acts of caring: puppetry in person-centred nursing
  • 2 Gibdel Wilson: Puppets talk, communities listen
  • 2.25 Poupak Azimpour: Listener dolls: a case study of women recovering from cancer
  • 2.45 Questions and discussion
  • 3.05 coffee
Mental health panel
  • 3.25 Marisa Latimer: Shadow puppetry and dramatherapy
  • 3.50 Kate James-Moore: Puppetry as a creative tool: struggle, control, power
  • 4.15 Joni-Rae Carrack: Objective and Subjective: puppetry and mental health
  • 4.40 Aaron Jean CrombĂ©: Self-acceptance and puppetry
  • 5.05 Lesley Burton: final reflections
  • 5.30 Questions and discussion

Update 18th August: