Abstract

Puppetry animation is an emerging embodied artistic practice in health education and care that provides unique opportunities for health intervention, clinician training, and medical and health humanities research. This chapter describes the technique of animating a constructed, material body and its effectiveness in health contexts. A global overview is provided with multiple case studies of successful interventions in therapeutic, community health, and medical training settings. Conceptual frameworks from disability studies, phenomenology, science and technology studies, and affect theory advance the theoretical possibilities of the praxis of puppetry animation in health. Future directions include the role of the imagination and embodiment in medical students and clinicians to help achieve an embodied, humanistic practice of medicine and health care. Puppetry explores embodiment (the body as it is lived) in all of its dimensions: personal, social, cultural, political, historic, and poetic. It also provides pathways to investigate the application of power of one being over another, serving patient intervention, health-care provider training, and public health.