Laugh, cry, heal with ‘the Jesus puppet’

Laughter yoga guru Paolo Trinidad turns into a ventriloquist using his Jesus puppet to spread hope among children displaced by a recent fire. by RAFFY LERMA

At the Lingap Karunungan Center in Mandaluyong City, children left homeless by a big fire last year gathered before a most reassuring speaker.

“I am with you. You are not alone in this journey.”

Thus spoke “Jesus Christ”—or the Lord’s puppet incarnation in the hands and voice of Paolo Trinidad, the proponent of Pinoy Laughter Yoga (PLY), who has added ventriloquism as part of his tools for helping others heal their inner wounds.

To go with that new skill, Trinidad assembled a cast of dolls, led by the one representing Christ.

“The point of the Jesus puppet is to let the children realize they are not alone, that [the Lord is] with them. That he is there to listen to them so they can say what they feel,” Trinidad said in an Inquirer interview after a psychological debriefing session for the young victims of a November 2015 fire that left 2,000 families  homeless in Mandaluyong. The inferno that hit Barangay Addition Hills was considered the worst in the city’s history.

His novel approach seemed effective: the otherwise restive audience fell quiet and transfixed each time the puppet spoke. “Yes, we will!” they responded enthusiastically when Jesus urged them to be good boys and girls at all times.

The other puppets in Trinidad’s troupe are “Ligaya,” her male counterpart “Totoy Tawa,” the dog “Hasya” (the Hindi word for laughter), “Lola Joy” and “Lolo Isaac.”

According to Trinidad, he decided to include puppets in his PLY sessions because he needed to “level up” and connect better with children who tend to be shy and silent during psychotherapy.

“That is why psychologists resort to expressive therapy and art therapy. Children have a limited language,” he said.

The Lingap Karunungan session served as the debut of the Jesus puppet, hence Trinidad was quite nervous about his performance.

Aside from being “very timely for Lent,” his new approach stemmed from a deep personal belief that Christ himself would be the perfect vessel for instilling moral values in kids. “The message is that it is high time for all of us to go back to the basic teachings of morality.”

The idea came to him last year, more than five years after he completed his training under Dr. Madan Kataria, founder of Laughter Yoga International. After his studies, he has since been carrying two pictures with him—that of St. Therese of the Child Jesus (his “idol” since childhood), and the “Laughing Christ” as painted by a Filipino priest, Fr. Armand Tangi.

“I wanted to have an image of a laughing Christ, but I decided to have a customized puppet instead,” he said.

But he took a pause after realizing that some Catholics might think he was making fun of Jesus. “I consulted a lot of people, including two priests, Fathers Joselito Sarabia and Rico Ponce. Father Sarabia was very much for it, especially since it promotes a deeper devotion to God. Father Ponce, a Carmelite, said that if it would drive souls to the Lord, then he did not see anything wrong with it.”

Gaining the approval of the two priests, Trinidad went on to see Diego Francia, a puppet maker.

“He was surprised and scared because it was the first time he was making a Christ puppet and he was scared for his career…. Then he prayed and had goose bumps while making it,” Trinidad said, adding that Francia took five days, not the usual three, to finish.

“He said it was the hardest puppet he has made because it is the first of its kind in the whole world. On the last day, it was supposed to be done by 10 p.m. but it took him until 5 a.m. the next day to finish it without getting any sleep,” he added.

Francia actually had a lot of qualms about Trinidad’s specific instruction to make the puppet  look like Tangi’s Laughing Christ. “He said people might get offended because they are not used to seeing Jesus laughing. But I told him that that is what my work is all about,” the PLY advocate said.

The puppet is garbed in a white tunic with a black-and-red-striped sash of Igorot-woven fabric. “I wanted a Jesus who was not dictated by the West,” Trinidad explained, noting that black is considered a happy color for the ethnic group.

He also asked for tips from his high school teacher, Laura Nocete, a fashion consultant and former member of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board. “She made sure that the puppet would look dignified since she said it might be subject to criticism.”

To give the puppet a voice, he studied under renowned puppeteer-ventriloquist Juanito “Wanlu” Lunaria.

He clarified that the puppet  is not used for the laughter yoga exercises or for cracking jokes. During that part of his session, the puppet is placed on a podium as a form of respect and it comes out only at the end of a PLY activity to tell stories, mostly from the Bible, and impart Christian messages.

The Jesus puppet is just about a month old, but it has been a big help in his advocacy. During a session with jail inmates, he used it to share a story by psychiatrist and best-selling author M. Scott Peck about a seer who had Marian visions. Many inmates were in tears by the end of the session.

The same thing happened with another group who encountered the Jesus puppet: cancer patients. “I can’t express in words what happens to them when they see it. They cry and I cry, too, and the best thing I can do is hide behind the puppet,” Trinidad said.

Recently, a prominent Muslim leader asked him to conduct PLY training programs in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. “She wants to bring PLY to different Muslim groups to facilitate the peace process. I said I won’t be bringing the Jesus puppet with me, but she was very assertive and said: ‘Bring him with you! [Jesus] is Isa in our Koran and he is a prophet of peace. He will be able to help us in the peace process.’”