With Strings Attached

Picture a day when all across America there are puppet activities,” says the Puppeteers of America Web site in promoting the National Day of Puppetry on Saturday, April 28. “Picture the … puppet visibility.”

Some might think more people would run screaming from such an image than would champ at the bit in anticipation, but in actuality, puppetry in Kansas City and across the globe seems to be hotter than ever. In fact, local puppet theater troupes are so busy and booked so far ahead, they make any kind of one-day celebration of the genre a lesson in the superfluous. Though a small National Day of Puppetry event will take place at the Antioch library in Shawnee, three other puppetry companies have shows that day that are only coincidental to the national observation. That’s because there’s hardly a day when they’re not performing.

“There’s definitely a resurgence of puppetry in America,” says Heather Lowenstein, the artistic director of Stone Lion Puppet Theatre. “And though this town is known mostly for children’s puppetry, it has been an adult form of entertainment all over the world for centuries.”

In Kansas City, puppetry is thought to be marginalized by the idea that if you’re more than six years old, you should look elsewhere for any kind of bang for your buck. Asked how puppetry went from having an adult sensibility — like that of Drak Puppet Theatre from the Czech Republic, booked at the Lied Center in Lawrence April 25 through 27 — to one just weaned from Teletubbies, Lowenstein tersely answers, “Jim Henson.”

“Don’t get me wrong; I love the Muppets and I love performing for kids,” she says. But she adds that puppetry has taken its knocks, perhaps undeservedly, for seeming too precious and infantile. “Fuzzy bunny suits don’t do it for me. You can turn Alice’s rabbit into something very sophisticated.”

Henson’s influence is also simultaneously applauded and lamented by Coyote Schaaf, regional director of the Kansas City-based Great Plains chapter of Puppeteers of America. “What he has done for the art form is wonderful,” she says, “but he’s made it more of a children’s art form than it ever was.”

Having created a few adult puppet shows, Paul Messner is a huge advocate of pushing puppetry out of the preschool ghetto. His Mark Twain piece, A Fireside Chat in 1601, which featured sex and flatulence jokes, appeared at the Opie Gallery last year and a festival in Los Angeles. Another piece, Urban Myths and Legends (“with the guy with the hook for a hand showing up in the beginning, the middle and the end”), was standing room only.

“My summer piece for adults will be a tribute to Johnny Quest,” Messner says of the gig that will be a respite from “touring extensively in the schools.” He also plans to perform in a few months at the Black Sheep Puppetry Festival in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where, he says, “They like naughty, on-the-edge stuff.”

But not all Kansas City puppeteers relish the idea of broadening their audience’s age range. Piccadilly Productions’ Lisa Jorgenson says her puppet theater is aimed at an audience made up of mostly children in preschool to third grade. “I tend to do old fairy tales with an empowerment message,” she says. “It’s high-energy, and there’s a lot of audience participation.”

While puppetry for adults is particularly big on both coasts and in Chicago, Jorgenson says it’s not for her. “I think I put a lot of adult humor in my shows; any performer would want to work in different styles,” she says. “But I haven’t found any show that gives me a reason to do an adult show with puppets. I don’t want to just put dirty words in a show and call it an adult show.”

Most of Stone Lion Puppet Theatre’s shows have been for children, with one notable exception: a two-and-a-half-hour musical version of The Jungle Book that played Kansas City, Kansas, Community College last year.

“It was the biggest show we had ever done,” Lowenstein says, “with a cast of 24, lighting by [the New Theatre’s] Randy Winder and with a ten-foot waterfall. And I’m working on an adult version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” As ambitious as she sounds, Lowenstein can’t hide her chagrin about the fact that there was hardly a peep about the show.

“It seems to be okay for children’s theaters to be considered professional theater and what we do, not [considered professional],” she says. Her work with The Coterie notwithstanding, she feels “connected to the theater community but apart. The theaters don’t put us aside; they know what we’re doing. It’s the [professional theater] audience and the media that don’t come see us. That’s why I’m doing more education and teaching — to let people know that what we’re doing is on the same level and nothing to be afraid of. Until that happens, we can’t get much bigger than we are.”

Messner agrees that the local press has not exactly been beating down his door for interviews. “Yet when I’m out of town, I always get articles. Just not here,” he says.

“Actually, I wish there was more criticism of puppet theater,” he adds. “It would do away with a little bit of the crap.”