EVEN PUPPETS HAVE PROBLEMS is an interactive program designed for early elementary students (K-2) to teach conflict resolution, anger management, and empathy through puppets and audience participation, helping kids explore healthy ways to handle pre-bullying situations and big feelings safely and creatively. A puppeteer presents a story about puppet friends dealing with conflict that gets to an aggressive breaking point. Then the puppeteer starts the show over and the students get to pause the action and become active participants, offering ideas to the puppet characters to solve problems and express and manage their emotions safely. Children in the audience not only suggest solutions that the puppets then try out, but some of the children get to step into the story, even voicing one of the puppets. In summary, they get to practice skills like empathy, effective communication, expressing feelings, emotion regulation, social-emotional learning and creative problem-solving. In the residency version, students also get to use role-play to explore how to handle real-life peer conflicts, and practice some more ways to express anger safely, calm down & problem-solve. Whether a one-off workshop or a residency, both are a fun, engaging way for young kids to learn essential life skills and find ways to handle disagreements and strong emotions.
This program was built off of the Puppet Intervention techniques pioneered by the Creative Arts Team in NYC in the late 1990's and early 2000's, when LFL co-founder Trina Fischer was working there, with ELTA Directors Karina Naumer and Andrea Dishy. Those Puppet Intervention techniques were in turn an adaptation of Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed Forum Theatre techniques - techniques in which all 3 LFL co-founders were trained by Chris Vine in the early 2000's, and in which they have become very experienced. TOTO (Theatre of the Oppressed) has influenced Looking for Lilith a great deal, not least of which in the creation of ALL their Interactive Theatre to Prevent Bullying - CHOICES, MAC'S WORLD and EVEN PUPPETS HAVE PROBLEMS.