Dealing With Feelings was a show that toured to early years settings and looked at the emotions that pre-schoolers start to encounter as they grow up.

Director, Jonathan Petherbridge writes:

“At the time I had two young children and noticed that the adults around them tended to keep things in the realm of “happy” and “sad”, while the toddlers were going through a whole gamut of strong emotions ranging from joy to frustration.  I thought if they can’t name it or share it, that feeling must be even more scary – literally overwhelming.

The show featured two life sized puppets Corduroy (boy) and Siv (girl).
They were voiced and animated by 4 performers and went through a handful of scenarios that I had seen my own children and their friends have to deal with.  These included problems with paints and brushes, not getting a party bag at your own party and your older brother deliberately spoiling things on holiday and you getting the blame.  There were songs which named feelings, and we left a recording for groups to use at circle time.
The piece toured a few times – literally by public demand, the groups loved it. And the children loved the puppets.

I remember one afternoon after we had packed up a little boy came back to demand that Corduroy be got back out of his suitcase because he needed to give him some advice.  Corduroy was brought out and the 4 or 5 year old boy just said “you’ve got to keep calm, Cor”, and then gave him a hug and ran off – message delivered.