continued from previous page The Puppet Co., 2006, Alice in Wonderland. Puppets by Christopher Piper, costumes by Allan Stevens and MayField Piper, set by


Allan Stevens. Photo: Allan Stevens


Alexandria was not going well. We had some wonderful people come onto the board, but they didn’t quite grasp what being a nonprofit means. We closed it. I was at loose ends, and my health had gone to hell in a handbasket. I had to sell my house to pay off construction bills on the theater. I was penniless.


Glen Echo Park AS: Then there was an offer to come out to Glen Echo Park and direct a piece for Adventure Theater. Ed Tamulevich, in the puppetry division, wanted me to do the puppets for Jack and the Beanstalk and Other English Folk Tales, At the auditions, who should be there but Christopher Piper, and by the time we got Jack and the Beanstalk open, we were fast friends. Chris was coming from Hawaii; he’d been across the country and to France and back again, so he was really interested in settling here. He wanted to apply for a yurt studio at Glen Echo. Would I join him? I did. Once together, we were contacted by the Smithsonian. They were doing a season of traditional fairy tales. I suggested a composite fairy tale, which we called The Magic Mirror. Chris wrote it. Chris made the creatures. I made the human characters. We were off, and here we are. JB: In 1981, Allan and Christopher had a puppet studio in a yurt at Glen Echo. They founded the Puppet Co. in 1982 and incorporated in 1983. During the summer months, they did shows at the Spanish Ballroom at Glen Echo, but at first, the space had no heat. Christopher met MayField in 1986, and soon they married. MayField helped secure a loan to renovate the space, and in May 1989, the first Puppet Co. Playhouse opened in the foyer of the Spanish Ballroom.


It was a major undertaking, from its early days in the park 14


through the construction of this beautiful theater that you and the Pipers are about to hand over to a new artistic director and team. Just how hard was it to make this all possible? AS: We had actually submitted proposals before, but we kept getting turned down. Our program had become so popular that we were having up to a hundred thousand people a year. We got the schedule of the park’s 1921 Dentzel Carousel changed because we could bring in the visitation. The director said, “We have to find you a space. We have to do this. Obviously, the public wants it.” Our relationship with the National Park Service was very good. The whole process of the restoration and the rescue of the park took over seven years from the time Audrey Calhoun said, “We’re going to do this,” to the time that we actually walked in the door. Originally, we were supposed to be able to move from the old playhouse into the new one with no interruption, but we realized that couldn’t possibly happen. We went into exile, so to speak, in the back room of the ballroom for at least two years. Longer than we wanted to, but through the design of this facility, a lot of which Christopher did…the ground plan of the theater and the stage was really what Christopher offered to the National Park Service, and the architect worked those things in, so we had a good deal to say about what was going to happen. It totaled out at $500,000. Christopher installed all the sound equipment, on the stage and in the house. Dan Brooks, who was our lighting designer for thirty years, did all the installation of the lighting. There were lots of ways we cut corners, because believe me, we got a lot for our half-million dollars. JB: What was the most difficult thing to deal with? AS: General aggravation. There were people on various com- mittees with Montgomery County who really wanted to slow


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