Arts in the Family: A Family of Artists Just Trying to Make a Living in the Wilds of Texas

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Thursday, January 19, 2012

Puppet Theater Memories


The series of photos in this post show the backstage area of the Le Theatre de Marionette at The North Park Center Mall in Dallas, Texas. I spent a lot of time there. Those two marionettes hanging at my workbench are for a spring variety show at the mall. Those marionettes were beautifully made by a puppeteer whose name I recall right now. The tin man was actually made mostly of tin so when he walked he made a clanking noise. That's an Elvis marionette to the far right of the picture. He performed to "Blue Suede Shoes" and actually had swiveling hip action. It was cool. They were very old and needed a little touching up before we could use them.

Here are some more of the marionettes for the show. There was Judy Garland and Gene Kelly and a couple of Fred Astaire marionettes. The tall puppet on the left was a mouse puppet Tina Gromova owned and wanted to use for the show but I don't think that happened. She would go home to Russia a least once a year always returning with some very cool puppets like the giant mouse.



(left to right) Eliza Doolittle, The Wicked Witch, The Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow. Of those four we used the Scarecrow for the show.


That's the one and only Tina Gromova doing repair work on what appears to be a very intricate inner workings for a marionette.

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