Norman Hetherington - Smiley's Good Teeth Puppet Theatre

Smiley's Good Teeth Puppet Theatre

In March 1962, the Dental Health Education and Research Foundation was established at the University of Sydney to promote the philosophy and practice of preventive dentistry and, in particular, communicate positive dental health messages to the general population. Preliminary studies had convinced the Foundation that "dental health literature of a hand-out nature was virtually useless unless it was used to supplement information or knowledge already passed on to the recipient by a dentist or some other authoritative person". Moreover, it was soon found that the presence of Dental Health Educators in primary schools, instructing children up to 12 years in such things as diet, oral hygiene and plaque control, was not as effective as anticipated.

In 1967, Hetherington was consulted by the Foundation; and, with the initial notion of strongly augmenting the work of the Dental Health Educators, he was responsible for establishing the "Smiley's Good Teeth Puppet Theatre", starring a new puppet, Smiley ("a little boy who gets toothache because he has not looked after his teeth properly"), that delivered performances based on a script that had been produced in collaboration with the Foundation, that featured all of its desired preventive dentistry messages. The first performance — which, it had been decided by that time, would run "in parallel with" (rather than "as part of") the dental health educator programme — was in February 1968, with the specific target of the younger, primary school children.

The shows were performed with two puppeteers, with the assistant operating Smiley, and Hetherington everything else. The show, and its associated Good Teeth Club — to which Hetherington, having emerged from behind the puppet stage, would invite the delighted children to join at the end of each of his performances (Anon, 1970) — was immensely popular with the school children immediately it began its operation.

The principal character of the Theatre is a boy called 'Smiley' who is the hero of the plot. He is shown visiting his dentist and receiving a teeth-care talk. The audience participates with Smiley in defeating 'Danny Decay', the villain of the story, by all repeating the four 'Good Teeth Rules'. After visiting his dentist, the scene changes to the Good Teeth Circus. Smiley is entertained by various circus performers, depicting fruit and vegetable jugglers and other good food characters, including the Master of Ceremonies 'Bristles Toothbrush' who helps Smiley to maintain decay-free teeth.
Children who attend performances of the Good Teeth Puppet Theatre are invited to write letters about what they have seen and to send drawings of the characters represented. Each child is given a leaflet summarizing the dental health message. It includes a colour-in chart illustrating some of the characters in the show and a certificate entitling the child to a membership of Smiley's Good Teeth Club. There are many hundreds of thousands of members of Smiley's Good Teeth Club throughout Australia.

The Foundation was overjoyed to discover that evaluations showed that, even after six months, the children could remember 70% of the dental health messages associated with the show (Woolley, 1980).

In 1970, as part of a weekend workshop conducted by the Australian Dental Association and the Dental Health Education and Research Foundation at Sydney University, Hetherington demonstrated his work to the assembled dentists, by allowing them to observe him deliver an entire performance to a group of children from Newtown North Primary School. They were all greatly impressed with his work.

Smiley's Good Teeth Puppet Theatre operated from 1968 to 1985; and, although it began in suburban Sydney, it was making trips into the country by late 1969.

As time passed, Hetherington became less involved in the actual delivery of the performances and often hired other puppeteers to perform the shows. For the four years his son Stephen studied at Sydney University (i.e., from 1977 to 1980), Stephen worked part-time on the show as a puppeteer, and the person who spoke to the children before and after each show. The other puppeteer who teamed with Stephen was Pam Sahm; she operated Smiley.