Puppet Dreams
Photo from Google
What’s on my mind?
The most influential Christmas gift I ever received as a child was a puppet theater. I was seven. I remember the enormous yellow stage with interchangeable backdrops. Two puppets, a boy and a girl, were attached to controllers at the front of the stage, allowing me to perform and watch my original productions simultaneously. It was a magnificent gift!
I fell in love with puppets as a small child, after Mom took me to see a Bob Baker marionette show. That love turned into fascination. During visits to family friends in the Bay Area, where five beautiful, handmade marionettes hung in their kids’ playroom, I couldn’t resist them, even though I was told not to touch. At school, making brown paper bag puppets with construction paper and feathers was another big moment in my growing obsession. Even now, puppets represent the magic in everyday objects and the power of imagination to bring stories to life.
Eventually, my first puppet theater broke, marking a transition. I graduated to sewing puppets from Dad’s old socks and experimenting with papier-mache. Inspired by the von Trapp kids in The Sound of Music performing a wonderful marionette show for their father, I wished for a marionette of my own.
That interest didn’t fade when we moved to Tarbela, Pakistan. There, I convinced my friends to join me in making hand puppets, building a theater, and writing and producing puppet shows. Most of our productions were incoherent fairytales, often improvised, but we charged admission anyway and entertained the neighborhood.
Years later, in the early 2000s, when my daughters were young, David caught the puppet bug. He researched and bought every puppet-making book he could find. He purchased woodworking equipment and a sewing machine for me, determined to start a family puppet side hustle. To me, it was an affirmation of my dream. I envisioned a creative approach this time, inspired by artists Paul Klee and my hero, type designer William Addison Dwiggins. The idea that Dwiggins and his designer friends made wooden marionettes, built a stage, and wrote and produced puppet shows sounded divine.
I set up a table in the garage and started designing and crafting papier-mache puppet heads and sewing costumes. Meanwhile, David dived into woodworking. We imagined creating spectacular marionettes like the Czechoslovakians, writing original plays off Greek tragedies, and converting our oversized garage into a puppet theater. And then, converting a food truck into a mobile puppet theater and taking our show on the road! Our daughters did not share our enthusiasm.
What happened to the dream? Like many dreams, life happened. And I’m okay with that. Nowadays, if puppets come up in conversation, David and I smile and reminisce about those good times and what could have been, ending with, “We could always make puppets!”
Yesterday was Christmas, which brought back memories of my beloved yellow puppet theater. Hoping to find a picture, I Googled it. To my surprise, my most influential Christmas gift was actually a tiny Kiddle Comedy Theatre! The puppets looked cheap, the controls fit baby hands, and the enormous stage I recalled was actually the size of a lunchbox. But if it weren’t for that tacky yellow theater, I would have missed out on all the joy puppets brought to my life. So, thank you, Santa Claus, for the Kiddle Comedy Theatre. It truly was the perfect gift.
