The Hunter’s Son

THE AWESOME PUPPET COMPANY recently performed its first outing of The Hunter’s Son, an adaptation of a West African Hausa dilemma tale, The Tale of a Hunter and his Son,¹ as part of a psychotherapy weekend retreat.² The performance was devised as a blueprint for using puppetry therapeutically in men’s work, from which a range of individual and group clinical spin-offs can be rolled out for different male client needs, including father-son relationships; personal-public leadership and social role identities; war trauma; substance abuse and rehabilitation; and other significant therapeutic explorations of restorative and reparative behaviour practice. The project was also a prototype for enlisting student placement work and Paula Andreewitch, final year drama at Bristol University (2009), contributed significantly sharing production, design and execution. As therapeutic puppetry generally remains fairly underutilized, the session afforded a valuable opportunity to explore how the medium might be used as a significant Dramatherapeutic tool with adult populations. Given the audience’s positive response to the performance, I thought it would be of some interest to share a few personal reflections on the project.