Tucked in the row of businesses along the Brookline Village train stop is a 49 year old theater filled with unique puppets and brimming with stories that come alive in front of newcomers and regulars alike.
The Puppet Showplace Theater has been a staple in the community since educator and puppeteer, Mary Churchill, opened its doors in June 1974. The theater has expanded from its beginnings and now offers puppet shows for adults and children, birthday parties, workshops, improv puppetry and touring shows. With its ever-growing array of offerings, the Puppet Showplace Theater has events for everyone regardless of age, culture, or theater experience.
As the resident artist, Sarah Nolen performs regularly at the Puppet Showplace Theater and teaches classes. Nolen said that while teaching her hand puppetry class, she has seen how the theater helps her students to feel comfortable on stage.
“We all shared the stage and everyone had a chance to show and to share and to be seen on stage. We all, as a collective, come together to view that and applaud that,” Nolen said. “I think there’s something really special about making the act of going on stage accessible.”
As the Box Office and Operations Manager since 2021, Bo Powell has watched many puppet shows and said that he has seen the value puppets have in developing childrens’ emotional skills.
“There’s so much social-emotional learning that the kids get through puppets because it’s sometimes easier to talk to a puppet than it is a person,” Powell said. “Sometimes it’s easier to hear things from a puppet than it is from a person, and I’ve seen a lot of kids have a genuine breakthrough.”
While puppets are typically associated with children, Nolen said that puppets have the power to foster comfort and a sense of belonging in adults.
“I think there’s a lot of the puppet world that speaks to adult feelings and adult themes and things that we as adults need to see represented, not naturalistically, but in the abstract, just in order to cope with it,” Nolen said.
Powell said that at the Puppet Showplace Theater he has seen how a puppet can connect to anyone of any background.
“Everybody can relate to a puppet. I think sometimes you can’t necessarily relate to a certain movie or show because it’s not necessarily your community or where you come from, but a puppet is universal and you can sort of put whatever you want on it as the audience,” Powell said.
During the pandemic, the Puppet Showplace Theater had to make a shift to virtual performances. Nolen said she used her background in film to turn the theater into a makeshift children’s media center to broadcast their shows, including their short-form puppet shows for adults called puppet slams.
“All of our puppet slams at night were suddenly open to everybody. So we had performers zooming in from Japan and Columbia. We were presenting acts from our network all around the world,” Nolen said. “We were doing some pretty robust productions.”
The Puppet Showplace Theater is no stranger to international puppeteers. Nolen said while the theater’s home is in Brookline, it’s a place for puppeteers from all over the world. Powell said that even the puppets that fill the Showplace’s store have roots in places like Nepal, Peru, China and Kenya.
“Puppeteers come from all over to tour through the Puppet Showplace Theater and they come to town and they don’t show their shows anywhere else. So having that as an access point to those [puppeteers] is just so so special,” Nolen said. “I just feel like it is entirely dependent on the community to survive and what’s really fascinating is we’re still up.”
