Puppet theatre: A way to tell what cannot be told and to face pain

Abstract

Processes of artistic reparation and memory recovery are spaces created for victims of state terrorism and family members of the disappeared in the context of the military dictatorship in Chile (1973‐90). Puppet therapy was utilized as a methodology by the company Puppets in Transit with participants drawn from Integrated Health Services in Chile in relation to reparation projects. This process of intervention with puppets seeks to restore social bonds, to enable an intergenerational dialogue and to transmit fragmented memory. The puppet, an expressive, symbolic and mediating object, stimulates a collective dialogue to create collective performance related to participants’ memories. All those mentioned in this article have given permission for their stories to be mentioned; we use only first names.