1969–1975 Allan Stevens: The new theater opened up in the Carmichael Auditorium, which is on the ground floor of what was History and Technology and is now The National Museum of American History. To be in the museum, we had to do museum- related shows, and how on Earth were we gonna do that? A good friend, Judy Morris, wrote some shows for us. Judy is a wonder- ful writer. Our first show was The Way- wardly Wandering Wagon Full of Banjo and Jack, which was Southern folklore, and we did a scavenger hunt related to exhibits in the theater, so there was definitely a link to the museum.
In 1972, we did The Hullaballoo Elec- tion of Osbert or Jess. I was working with Ingrid Crepeau from very early on. She was developing her own puppetry style, so we said, hey, we’ll do these puppets together. She did the principal characters, Muppet- like, fabric puppets. In the show, the two characters were running for president of the puppet theater, and we went through the whole process of campaigning, of do- ing door-to-door, making flyers. And at the end of the show, everybody goes into a voting machine and votes. Now Osbert was orange, Jess was green. The white audience members tended to vote for Os- bert. The black audiences tended to vote for Jess. It seemed the difference between the warm and cool colors actually split on a racial divide. I learned that even if you’re avoiding the subject of race, by just using colors, you’re not avoiding it. But those years at the Smithsonian, all the pieces came together. Slowly but surely, I learned how to do all the things I didn’t know how to do before. I knew how to make a wrist joint; the head joint was really kind of transformational. It’s a very simple thing in which the head is balanced on elastic. Fifty percent rubber, fifty percent cotton elastic, so that the head can be nodded by triggers on the handle of the rod puppet. The first time we did it, we were working on Tom Saw- yer. We put the first one together and tried it, and we all went, “Look at that!” It was really a wonderful moment. Jeff Bragg: During this time, Grammy winner Ken Bloom worked as a puppeteer for you? AS: Ken was in the touring shows. He
did The Marvelous Land of Oz. He may have done Tom Sawyer as well. The only time he performed at the Smithsonian was when we were doing Alice in Won- derland. We did a new show every three months, and none of them were little, so everybody really wanted to take a break
right at the time that the touring com- pany came back from the tour. We let the resident company off on a holiday, and the touring company, to earn a few more bucks, got to do the resident show, which was Alice in Wonderland.
After the success of the election year
show, we developed a show called Patch- work, which was a patchwork in terms of little bits of Americana, and short stories, and patchwork being the fabric that Ingrid Crepeau used to create the puppets. It was hysterical! Absolutely wonderful! It ran for quite a while. One of the characters was this little girl who liked to put on plays, and so she would get all the other charac- ters dressed up in outrageous things and put on a little pageant.
Adventure Theater. The Odyssey, 1983. Jill Metzger as Athena, Anne Holmes as Calypso, design by Allan Stevens. Photo: E. Penn Stephens
But those years at the Smithsonian, all the pieces came together. Slowly but surely, I learned how to do all the things I didn’t know how to do before. I knew how to make a wrist joint; the head joint was really kind of transformational. It’s a very simple thing in which the head is balanced on elastic. Fifty percent rubber, fifty percent cotton elastic, so that the head can be nodded by triggers on the handle of the rod pup- pet. The first time we did it, we were working on Tom Sawyer.
That show really launched Ingrid. She went from that into Kids on the Block, the series of puppets that have physical handi- caps. She developed puppets for all these disabilities. She and another puppeteer working with us, Sarah Toth, worked out Patchwork Productions. Around that time, Ingrid happened to bump into Michele (Valeri) and Dinorock was born. AS: We closed the Smithsonian Puppet Theater, as I knew it, in 1975. The place was going to be renovated for the bicenten- nial exhibit, which was the next year. The idea was that for the 1976 show, we would submit a new application. At the same time, Nic Coppola submitted a proposal to actually recreate the 1876 centennial show. Nic’s show was exactly what it ought to be. I withdrew my proposal. His show ended up being very good. The stage was absolutely gorgeous, stunning.
But that put me on the street, so to speak. I had a number of small jobs. At some point I said, “In Alexandria, there’s the old Rich- mond Theater that’s been sitting vacant. Let’s see if we can go inside. The roof was gone, and the decorative tin ceiling and the cornices were hanging by a thread. We talked to the owner who said, “We’ll replace the roof if you’ll do everything else.” A limited partnership was formed, and she basically hired me to be artistic director. Well, we opened, and it was a great opening; it really was. The place looked in- credible. We couldn’t get schools to come. Except for a few dedicated citizens, Alexan- dria wasn’t ready for a puppet theater. During that time, Donna and David
Wisniewski were working for Prince George County, and I had done Peter and the Wolf with them the year before. They wanted to do Hansel and Gretel with live singers. So, I worked with them and traveled back and forth, to earn a little money to pay people back at the Alexandria theater.
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