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Hospital C Day 5

Participants created an ancient, bearded, sock puppet character and devised the story of his life emigrating from Ireland during the Famine to Australia and after many adventures with weird creatures and strange berry-picking friends, time-travelling back to present day in a hospital in Ireland.


This puppet will travel to the other hospitals involved in this project, one by one, to undertake more adventures.  The video we made today will be his background info.


I temporarily abandoned `musical puppets` because the sock puppet seemed so immediately accessible last week.  For all the innovations, I think it just cant be beaten for humour and versatility.  They were very expressive and several scenes were performed and recorded.  Later the video was further narrated with some more experiments in voice-altering filters on Audacity. A couple of children made puppets in the ward facilitated by the teacher and these were incorporated into the performance - one little girl finally came in at lunchtime and performed her puppet for her visiting brother to record.


I didn`t do the video link today, which was a pity in hindsight. When I signed on there were already 3 groups online and the sound was difficult and I felt it would be too chaotic to add a 4th.  Just the fact of arranging everyone around the monitor and figuring out who to talk to and how, not knowing how long it would take to sort out, was a too much for me but possibly not for the children so its a reminder to pace the workshop, calm down and stop juggling!


Overall, good day and great work done - the most developed performance so far and well narrated for video.  Energy was low for a couple of the kids though and this affected my own feeling of enjoyment but on reflection, they gave everything they had.  We had an interval of a puppet football game when I was afraid I`d drained them entirely!  


I know they had fun despite tiredness and we achieved a lot together.  I think I actually wore them out and I`m was pretty wrecked myself!

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