No Strings has been working alongside the Catholic Relief Service in Sri Lanka, and field-tested a tsunami-awareness project there in March this year. We developed a script to address the ongoing anxiety experienced by tsunami-affected children to help with their recovery process and move on. This took the form of a live show, which interacted and reinforced the story being told by a six-minute film.

No Strings believe this is the first time that an educational puppet show has been formatted in such a way.

Much of the action takes part in the film, which means that fewer actors and puppets are required. The film is shown on a large screen. In between the action sequences, a storyteller addresses the audience and two puppets pop up from behind the screen, as if flying in and out of the shadow puppet action.
The show was successfully field-tested to 1,200 children in schools and community halls in the Galle to Hambantota region.
Following on from discussions with Kathy and Michael in the field, and in light of the recent major insurgencies in Sri Lanka, both ourselves and CRS now believe that maybe the best way forward would be to use a video-only format.
CRS were very keen that we also looked at other topics to develop programmes for. Because of the fear of the outbreak of civil war and the amount of displaced people it has caused, they feel we could help greatly in this area. Due to the insurgence, very little information has been coming out of the country and so we are still at an early stage. Rebuilding Sri Lanka has donated £9,000 (approx $16,000) for the tsunami-awareness film. The remaining funds will be negotiated with CRS. This money will be released once the negotiation is complete with CRS.

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No Strings is now going to team up with the Catholic Relief Service to work on the next stage of our programme, a new puppet project, a film with a live show component which can travel to any area in the country, and be shown outdoors at night, or indoors at any time. The show will require a minimal set-up and personnel, be highly entertaining, and teach children and adults where a tsunami comes from, its definition, what the warning signs are, and how to escape from one.

The rationale for the show is that many of the children who experienced the tsunami fear there will be another one, that they will lose more family members, or be separated from their family and left alone. They don't understand why it happened, or that there can be warning signs and that there are ways to protect themselves. We believe that equipping them with this knowledge will greatly reduce anxiety, and increase the safety level of children in a tsunami-prone area. In may well be that another tsunami won't reoccur in their lifetimes, but the fact that they are aware of its causes and know how to make themselves safe will help their recovery process.

The show itself will be a combination of an interactive film, shown on a TV screen, with two live puppets, actors and a narrator. We will be bringing with us a full script, of which a 10-minute section (including a four-minute film piece) is ready to be shown and performed.

Laloo is a cormorant who comes to the aid of a young, orphaned sea turtle, Tala, whose little sister Nila has stayed in her shell, refusing all food, since the tsunami struck. Together, they decide that the best way to help her get over her trauma is to find out exactly why it happened, and how they can ensure that they and their friends are safe should it happen again. During their journey, they meet various animal characters who supply different pieces of information about the tsunami, until they finally meet the Great Grandfather Whale, the oldest and wisest creature in the sea. The whale will take them to the edge of the tectonic plate near Sumatra, and show them the vast rift where one plate slid under the other, displacing the massive amount of water that became the terrible wave.

The No Strings / CRS team will visit Hambantota and Galle on the South West and South East coasts which were both badly affected by the tsunami. In each of these areas we will hire and train local performers. If this first phase is deemed successful, we will then go ahead with the completed full script version, with the aim of distributing it right around the country's affected coastline. 

In addition, we will be working with CRS on future programmes to address other child-related issues, using the same puppet characters and the same format, and will send out future teams to work on them.