Puppets Teach Compassion at The Children’s Art Museum (CAM)

Photo credit (all photos): Sienna Wildfield

Last month I took my daughter to see Constant Wonder sing about life cycles and animals at the Eric Carle Museum. She loved it. This past weekend I took her to see Dr. Marmalade perform with her animal puppets at the Children’s Art Museum. She loved that too!

Whether their shows are educating the children in the audience or introducing social skills, there are a few elements that both shows shared that made the kids respond very enthusiastically: animals, audience interaction, and surprises.

DR. MARMALADE’S PERFORMANCE FORMULA

Animals : Dr. Marmalade shared several of her puppet friends with the audience. One special puppet was a gorilla with a tummy ache. With the audience giggling and helping, Dr. Marmalade was first able to retrieve a tube of toothpaste from the gorilla’s tummy. She reminds her gorilla and her audience that toothpaste is to be spat out, not swallowed. She then pulls out a crescent moon ornament. Her gorilla friend thought it was a banana. Together the audience reminds the gorilla not to put things in his mouth. And finally, with a couple of kids helping out, a long rainbow scarf is pulled out, leaving the kids in fits of giggles. Compassionate hugs by many children left her gorilla friend feeling much better.

Audience Interaction: The audience was encouraged to participate throughout the performance, including the adults. One parent was asked to come up and pretend he was a tree while a Raven danced upon his head. Children then came up and helped Dr. Marmalade with her bunny & puppy puppets while others shouted out on que.

Element of Surprise: Just like Constant Wonder’s “Wonder Trunk,” Dr. Marmalade offered an element of surprise with her traveling “Emerge-And-See” Wagon. A clever name for a doctor’s trunk. Excitement grew as children watched Dr. Marmalade pull out her puppets and props to share with and engage the audience.

Following the performance, my daughter gushed about the funny antics of Dr. Marmalade. Her performance definitely left my daughter wanting more! Dr. Marmalade does several different performances and we look forward to her return to CAM.

Discover upcoming events CAM will be hosting by visiting their web site at: www.thechildrensartmuseum.org. Upcoming events will also be posted on Hilltown Families weekly Suggested Events post. If you would like to subscribe to our e-mailed newsfeed to received our posts, click here to add your email address.