By Sergio Barreto
Morgan and Clements have been rehearsing with Kipniss for a week on the theater’s small stage. It’s only 12 feet deep, though it looks deeper from the audience’s point of view. Hidden behind drapes are two “bridges”–sections of scaffolding that run eight feet above the stage–where the puppeteers stand. Between the bridges are wooden bars where the handmade marionettes, which stand three to four feet tall and weigh 25 to 30 pounds, hang from hooks when they’re not being used. There’s hardly any space between the bridges and the stage walls, and most of it’s taken up by puppets. Kipniss, who’s thin and wiry, negotiates the clutter easily, but his longtime assistant, Lou Ennis, who’s 73 and weighs more than 300 pounds, struggles. It’s even harder when there are four people on the bridges.
After a few minutes, Kipniss lowers the orchestra pit. He climbs up to the bridges, and the show begins.
“Would you please grab the puppets you’re supposed to grab,” Kipniss berates her.
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A woman walks up to Kipniss and says, “I teach at a school for children with special needs. Your assistant tells me you do school performances, and I think our children would love it if you could come over.”
After the audience has left, Kipniss, Morgan, and Clements pick up the trash and sweep the floor. Ennis plops down in a chair in the lobby, surrounded by the marionettes and ventriloquist’s dummies Kipniss has out for sale, and promptly dozes off.
“What I loved–and still love–so much about puppetry is the illusion of it, the near magic that we create for people onstage,” says Kipniss. “Like in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, when the skeleton’s head pops off and his body comes apart and the audience goes ‘Oooh.’ Or when the stripper takes off her clothes in Les Petite Folies. We use pins, strings, hooks, and magnets to create that effect. But the people watching have no idea. They’re just enchanted and mystified.”
