Puppet Power 2025 - Global Voices

Join us online for five (5) exciting online parties from artists and academics around the world as they discuss puppetry in education, social issues and as a tool for teaching.

Participants who purchased the full conference registration can attend in person in the auditorium at the Centre for Newcomers.

Party 1:
Saturday, October 18th
9:15am - 10:15am - Miguel Albi Araujo - Portugal
Cegonha – Bando de Criação is a puppet theatre group founded in Brazil in 2017 and is now based in Portugal. Led by Miguel Albi Araujo and Vida Oliveira, Cegonha weaves diverse artistic languages to tell non-hegemonic stories, collaborating with artists, curators, and institutions on innovative puppet-based creations.
In 2019, Cegonha – Bando de Criação created What’s My Name, Mom?, a puppet theatre show about refugees and immigration. Inspired by Kate Milner’s My Name is Not Refugee, Sebastião Salgado’s Exodus, and interviews with refugees, it premiered in Brazil and was later adapted to film during the pandemic. The screen version featured in UNHCR’s 2021 Refugee Day celebrations and was recognized by the Prague Quadrennial as a major Brazilian puppet production (2019–2022). At this conference, Miguel will share the creative process, exploring the show’s impact, challenges, and lessons learned to inspire future puppetry work.

Party 2:
Saturday, October 18th
11:00am - 12:00pm - Fedelis Kyalo - Kenya

Fedelis is a Kenyan puppeteer, educator, and director. He leads Puppets 254, founded Krystal Puppet Theatre, and as of May 2025 serves on UNIMA International Executive Committee. Through workshops and performances, he uses puppetry to address health, governance, and environmental issues across Kenya and internationally.

Showcasing Tears by The River: Fostering Understanding and Empathy Through Puppetry from an African Lens, Fedelis presents a poignant puppetry session exploring African migration stories. Focusing on young migrants crossing from Morocco to Spain, it highlights the dangers, hardships, and hopes of their journeys. He also shares his work at Kakuma Refugee Camp, where puppetry workshops helped South Sudanese refugees process trauma and share their stories. Beyond migration, Fedelis demonstrates how puppetry is used across Kenya and East Africa to address critical issues like health, governance, and environmental conservation. This talk powerfully shows how puppetry can foster empathy, ignite conversation, and promote meaningful social change.

Party 3:
Saturday, October 18th
12:45pm - 1:45pm - Karim Dakroub - Lebanon

Dr. Karim Dakroub, theatre director, puppeteer, psychologist, and professor, founded KHAYAL Association and merges theatre with psychotherapy. His acclaimed puppet plays support healing, education, and social change globally.

Puppetry as a medium of psychosocial animation

Karim's presentation, Puppetry as a Medium of Psychosocial Animation, outlines his intervention model using puppetry as a tool for expression and communication in crisis and displacement contexts. It focuses on training activists—social workers, psychologists, and artists—who work with refugees and displaced people of all ages. He will share practical training steps and techniques, drawn from field experience and informed by various theoretical frameworks, including the psychosocial approach (IOM), Embodiment-Projection-Role (S. Jennings), and transitional phenomena (D. Winnicott). This multidisciplinary approach highlights how puppetry can support emotional resilience, storytelling, and healing in vulnerable communities facing trauma and transition.

Party 4:
Saturday, October 18th
2:30pm - 3:30pm - Sonia Cebollada - Mexico

Sonia has over 40 years’ experience as a puppeteer. She is a Literature graduate, and founder of Teatro Naku Mx. She has written/directed 25+ acclaimed plays, showcased at festivals across Latin America, Asia, and Europe. Also, a poet, teacher, and screenwriter, she leads international workshops on puppetry and playwriting. Sonia’s life across Venezuela, Italy, and now Mexico has shaped her deep interest in migration. She works to harness the powerful, consciousness-raising potential of puppet theatre to explore and express migration's personal and social dimensions.

As a migrant herself, her work is deeply rooted in lived experience. After arriving in Mexico, she created a lambe-lambe show about migration called Equipaje Mínimo, which has been performed several times to great success. It was awarded the Maleta Abierta prize for migration-themed work in 2024. Sonia also led workshops for migrant women focused on making cloth dolls and will share both of these powerful and positive experiences—the play and the workshop—and reflect on how they’ve connected art, storytelling, and healing.

Party 5:
Sunday, October 19th
9:30am - 11:15am - Eric Bass - USA

Sandglass Theatre’s action-packed, high-energy production, Babylon, is a response to the worldwide refugee crisis and its impact on communities in the United States. Working with the USCRI Vermont (US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants), Sandglass seeks to understand the challenges that face refugees and asylum seekers. Sandglass conducted research and interviews with new residents who immigrated to the US in order to gain insight into their plight and the challenges of resettlement.
Babylon looks at the relationship of refugees to their homelands, lost and new, and the conflicts that exist within the countries to which they flee. Using puppets and moving panoramic scrolls, five actor/singer/puppeteers tell refugees’ stories in original four-part choral songs. This production is best for ages 14 and up.
Following the screening Eric Bass, Founder of Sandglass Theatre, will discuss the creative process and impact of Babylon and host a Q & A.

Online Participation Information

All online presentations will be delivered via the Zoom platform. Prior to the event, participants will receive their personalized Zoom access link by email. This single link will provide access to all six online sessions, offering a seamless experience and helping us ensure the security and integrity of your registration.

As part of the registration process, you will be asked to indicate your preferred language: English, French, or Spanish. While we are actively pursuing funding to support live translation, we cannot guarantee it at this time. However, AI-generated captions will be available to support accessibility and multilingual engagement.

Please ensure you have a Zoom account registered with the same email used for your event registration. Your personalized link is tied to your account and cannot be shared or transferred.

Thank you for your understanding and support as we work to make the online experience as inclusive and accessible as possible.