Power of Puppets

Maya Nadison, of Strasbourg, France, has always had an appreciation for the performance arts and particularly puppetry. “My father hand-carved a wooden puppet theater for my birth,” Nadison recalls.  “And my mother was always teasing my father about getting wood chips in her salad because he would build the puppets on the kitchen table.”

Inspired by a puppetry class she took during her sophomore year, Nadison applied for an Undergraduate Research Grant and in summer 2005 created a thoughtful but entertaining puppet show, L’tle Grain and the Sea-Bully, which teaches schoolchildren about the dangers of bullying. She found puppets could convey serious messages to children about public health issues or concepts such as peaceful conflict resolution.

Nadison, with help from friends, performed her show at various YMCAs and Chicago-area schools, and the Northwestern student theater group Vertigo Productions hosted a production on the lakeside campus in spring 2006. Nadison then used a Weinberg Research Grant to present her show to schoolchildren in Tokyo last summer.

During her senior year, Nadison completed an honors thesis under the direction of Robert Gundlach, linguistics chair and director of the Weinberg College of Arts and Science’s Writing Program, exploring the development of children’s health theater. She also created a second educational theater production. Nadison, an ad hoc health policy and arts major, hopes to continue to find creative ways to use theatrical arts as a medium of communication in lieu of the more formal aspects of health promotion. 

“You can deliver messages in a light-hearted fashion,” says Nadison, “and it’s easier for the child to relate to the puppet, only because it’s more ludicrous, it’s more playful.”

— Asa Church (WCAS07)