Among our artists are also some marionettists. These are persons, who hold and play the strings connected to the puppets.
One day, one of these marionettists visited a children hospital and was confronted with an awkward situation as follows. A little girl of eight years had severe burns on her arms. After her medical treatment for some time, she needed to move her arms again as part of the rehabilitation. The doctor was there as were her parents. However, moving the arms were causing the girl tremendous pain and therefore she refused to cooperate. No gentle words or other encouragements from doctor and parents made the strongly-willed girl to move her arms.
Our marionettist happened to see all this through the window between hospital room and corridor. He had a nice story in mind and gently knocked on the door to be allowed getting in. Without much ado, he told a beautiful story with the marionettes he was manipulating with his hands. Then he needed an other puppet to appear in the story, but could not manage with his own two hands anymore. He therefore asked the girl, if she could just hold some strings while he took an other puppet. In meantime he continued telling his story. From time to time, he asked the girl to make certain movements with her arm in order to let "her" puppet take full part in the story.
It seems to have been an emotional experience for the doctor and the parents to see the little girl moving both arms in all kind of ways without thinking of the pain as she was too much absorbed by the story.
The story was made a continuous one over several days with both the marionettist and the girl as the main actors and doctor and parents as the audience.
It was a lovely experience to hear about and I am happy to share it with readers from Steemit.
