AP52 Astles

This paper offers an examination of puppetry as a tool within grief narrative for children and young people. Puppetry occupies the space between life and non-life and has historically been used as a means to communicate between worlds and between different realities, including within funeral ceremonies. Kubler-Ross, Tonkin, Kaplow et all have offered various theories of grief narrative; puppetry is a means to engage Winnicott’s idea of the transitional object within multidimensional grief theory. This can be engaged through classroom and educational puppetry practice which uses puppetry as a means for the child to negotiate loss and grief.