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Puppeteers' Cooperative and Its Puppet Free Lending Library in New York City
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Go to Littleviews' Online Photo Gallery or click on any picture here to see 52 photos of the Puppeteer's Cooperative Puppet Free Lending Library as it was staged in the Brooklyn Arch. The article below refers to pictures in the gallery by number.
Currently, a slideshow of all the photos can be seen on Littleviews NY Photos.
October 2007: Here's a note from Stuart Braman:
The final show of our season at The Music Pagoda in Prospect Park will host Theater Dzieci and their unique version of Macbeth. "Dzieci Makbet" tells Shakespeare's dark tale of fate and power with only four performers rotating all the parts. The company employs haunting songs from Eastern Europe and Scandinavia in their Gypsy version of the Scottish play. Please join us on October 19th, 20th or 21st at 6:00 pm for one hour of witches and warlords. The charm is wound up. Come see. At the Music Pagoda in Prospect Park.
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 The Puppeteers' Cooperative is a theatrical group that specializes in creating and manning giant puppets and banners used in pageants, plays, processions, parades, and parties. They generously share information about building these giants in a self-published book entitled 68 Ways to Make Really Big Puppets (Photo 52).
How big? Puppets twenty feet and up, like the Blue Faced Woman seen here, are considered petite!
Of course, once a puppet giant is created and appears in public, it becomes alive, much like Pinocchio. For the sake of the puppet's soul and the general public who need ways to entertain at parties and pageants, the Cooperative founded the Amalgamated Puppet Libraries, better known as The Puppet Free Lending Library, where old puppets never die; they are simply reused!
In 2005 and 2006, one such Puppet Free Lending Library was housed in the Brooklyn Arch, a beautiful building constructed to honor civil war soldiers. The arch sets the stage for a puppet display as it is adorned with lively brass statues, including an array of leaping horses on top, and war scenes on the front.
 The Brooklyn Arch has two columns, both of which contain steep, narrow, spiral staircases that lead to a gallery across the top. The Puppet Free Lending Library was housed in the column pictured on the right. Plays were held in the gallery.
While the Coop is known for making puppets and putting on theatrical events, it is less known for its ability to curate artistic displays. While the 2005-2006 library did, indeed, lend out puppets, more noteworthy is that it created an art exhibit that rivaled in beauty and imagination anything I've seen in Manhattan or Paris.
The exhibit lined a very steep, spiral staircase and to see it was a challenge. If you climbed all the way to the top, you were, indeed, physically fit. For a glimpse of its width and depth, see Photos 9, 11, 28, and 45.
Puppets were draped from the walls surrounding the staircase. While you might think that making giant puppets takes skill, the staging of these puppets in the steep pit surrounding the stairwell was amazing. I assume that none of the puppeteers involved suffered from vertigo!
 The majority of puppets were made of paper mache and old cloth. Even though these materials are cheap, the artistic results were outstandingly beautiful. How beautiful? Well, I would not have been able to take so many good photos had the puppets been drab, poorly hung, and disproportionate.
Contact the Puppeteers' Cooperative
Whether you need puppets for your own theatrical event, staging, or exhibits, or want classes on how to make puppets (great for schools), the Cooperative's site at www.gis.net/~puppetco provides links to member puppeteers and their creative work.
To hire puppeteers or build or borrow puppets, email puppetco@gis.net, or call
Theresa Linnihan (718 853-7350) in Brooklyn, or Sara Peattie (617 263-2031) in Boston.
October 2007 update:
The contract with Prospect Park for 2007 will end in December at which point the Cooperative will lose the temporary storage space for the puppets that once comprised the New York Puppet Library. Prospect Park is undergoing a renewal phase that will repair the leaking roof of the Sailors and Soldiers Memorial Arch and also restore the Music Pagoda where our puppets have been stored since May of 2007.
If you appreciated the resource that was the Puppet Library, this would be a good time to send an email to the park. Tell your own story of discovering the puppet libray and/or performance series and encourage the park to restore the library to the Arch where we can continue to enhance community festivals and celebrations with puppets of all sizes (tthomas@prospectpark.org). If you have any ideas for a new home for the puppet library or simply a place to store our collection of puppets, please contact Theresa Linnihan, 718-853-7350
Questions? Just ask!
Karen Little
Article and photos by Karen Little. First published on 7/28/2007. All rights reserved by www.Littleviews.com.
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