Charleston
Daily Mail
Tuesday October 24, 2006
Puppets promote health
Daily Mail
staff
Imagination
with no strings attached.
Area elementary school
students are spending much of this week, as well as last week, using their
imaginations to help create some puppet magic.
Last week, the Madcap
Puppet Theatre visited Mary Ingles Elementary School near Campbell's Creek,
asking students to use their creative juices to help develop a puppet show
focused on healthy living habits that will be performed in March.
During her visit to Mary
Ingles Elementary, Mel Hatch-Douglas, a puppet artist for the theater company,
even showed students how to make a puppet come alive -- a secret to many.
Madcap Puppet Theatre is
a nonprofit touring children's theater company, based in Cincinnati. Puppet
artists from the company were sent to schools in the Charleston area to help
kids develop their own show.
This week, Hatch-Douglas
is working with students from Watts Elementary School on Charleston's West
Side.
The puppet show will
focus on healthy habits. The target audience is students ages 2 to 8.
"It's all about
early education. We want them to understand how to do things like eat healthy,
exercise and take care of their teeth," said Jennifer Cavender, outreach
librarian at Kanawha County Public Library.
"It's really neat
that they're getting to help them develop the show," she said.
Terri McDougal, director
of children's services at the library, agreed.
"I only wish they
could come to more schools."
The puppet characters
designed and used by Madcap can be up to 12 feet tall and range in color and
style. Some are hand puppets, while others are body puppets. Some, because of
their size, are even operated by actors wearing backpacks.
The Madcap Puppet Theatre
is unique in that it often combines oversized puppets with actors. Most puppet
shows focus on the puppets themselves, relocating those actors lending their
voices to the puppets to behind the curtain.
"To help create the
script, decide how the characters should look and how many they should have. .
. it's all so exciting for the kids," McDougal said.
Madcap will return to
Charleston in March to present the finalized show to area elementary schools,
Head Start centers and Kanawha County Public libraries.
No specific performance
dates or locations have been set.
The Madcap show in March,
sponsored by the Kanawha County Public Library, is part of a prestigious
Institute of Museum and Library Services grant.
The grant is worth about
$250,000 and was awarded last fall to the Clay Center, West Virginia Public
Broadcasting and the library.
A majority of the grant
money funded the Sesame Street exhibit at the Clay Center. The exhibit, called
"Sesame Street Presents: The Body," opened earlier this month and
continues through December.
Like the Madcap puppet
show in March, it focuses on children developing healthy habits at a younger
age.
The puppet show, also
funded by the IMLS grant, is part of the library's "Beginning a Healthy
Life Program."
The program targets
children ages 2 to 8 and their parents and caregivers to provide a learning
environment that encourages the development of healthy living habits.
Through various programs,
outreach efforts and enhanced resources, the library hopes to educate people
about serious health-related problems such as obesity, diabetes and tobacco
use.
Such programs include Tae
Kwon Do classes.
For more information on
the "Beginning a Healthy Life" and its program offerings, visit
http://kanawha.lib.wv.us/ healthy_life.html.
Contact writer Jessica
Karmasek at jessica@dailymail.com or 348-1796.