Making It Work in Phoenix
By Nancy Smith
“I’m sorry. We just got word from the district. No outsiders are allowed in the school. School closes at the end of today, and we don’t know when it will open again.”
W
ith a pit in my stomach, I drove my unloaded show back to the puppet theater. We had a troupe coming from Japan in a couple of weeks, and their preshipped equip- ment was waiting for them. We had to cancel, and reimburse their plane tickets. Prepaid tour- ing shows and field trips rushed to cancel, and we refunded their payments. Suddenly everything was shut down, and the Great Arizona Puppet Theater, heavily reliant on earned income from our busy in-house and touring schedule for over 30 years, was out of work and out of money.
Our Board agreed that we must keep the theater afloat and our small band of talented, experienced puppeteers together and employed. We acquired a PPP loan in the first round. The Jim
Henson Foundation told us that they valued the place of live pup- pet theaters and sent a donation that made me cry with gratitude. We came up with a budget that included emergency relief funds, loans, donations and earned income. But how could we earn anything now?
A few shows converted to online recordings, and we were learning to do that. Then, puppeteer Gavin Cummins stood in the parking lot and looked at a flat, grassy area right behind our building. Why not do a puppet show there? People could watch from their cars. We would ask for donations.
Our first Drive-In Puppet Show was a Puppet Slam, accompa- nied by a local DJ. The parking lot was packed. It was chaotic, exciting, fun, totally exhausting, and utterly unprofitable. Back up, think it over, and reassess. We had three goals: Keep
Giant cardboard dinosaur measuring 9.5’ from nose to tail, by Gwen Bonar for Dinosaur Picnic. Operated by Gavin Cummins & Lisa Haslbauer. Photo: Nancy Smith
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