Mowanjum artists, senior law women, cultural custodians and young people have worked with Western Australian puppetry artist and performance maker Karen Hethey since 2006, exploring puppetry as a medium to learn and tell traditional stories.
For young people especially, puppetry is a fun and beautiful way for communities to become a creative part of the storytelling process, while learning practical skills such as design, painting and staging. Using handmade puppets and colourful projection, these productions provided the younger generation and the broader community with an opportunity to better understand the law, culture and traditional history of the Mowanjum people.Shadow Puppets
Following the success of the 2014 production of Dunbi the Owl, Mowanjum artist Leah Umbagai chose to recreate two stories for the 2015 Mowanjum Festival. Both stories, Parrots Stealing Fire and The Hairy Ugalah and The Little Rats, were passed on by her Grandmother. Karen Hethey facilitated the creation of these stories alongside Mary-Lou Divilli and Mowanjum children aged between 5 - 18 years.
The children interpreted these two stories into paintings, which were then transformed into colourful backgrounds which were digitally projected for the performance. Twenty wooden shadow puppets were made and brought to life by the performers and the production was narrated by Rachael Umbagai, Mary-Lou DiVilli and Tristan Chulung.
