Our puppets went to Italy!

In June, a few of us traveled to Lucca, Pistoia and Florence to offer some fun and friendly puppet theatre!

The puppet journey has not been as easy as it sounds…

During last years visit to Tuscany several churches and groups asked if we had puppets to bring on our next visit. We were amazed that so many people asked the same question so we came home searching for puppets.
Of course our church had some interesting characters hidden in the closet, in need of some repair ! Luckily I am surrounded by crafty people and the puppets got a well deserved face lift.
We have brought the puppets out of retirement and they went on a world wide tour!….well, just Italy really but they passed through Munich, Paris and Spain on the way in and out of Italy so that counts as world wide.

First we had to read about a billion puppet scripts to find just the right ones! Puppet theatre died in the States several years ago and I did not want anything too checky, out dated or over the top. After reading and even editing a few times, we found some shows that would work for all audiences. We have a show dealing with patience, another with lessons on kindness, having a positive attitude and even the advantages of helping your Mom around the house! These can be performed in small rooms, parks, churches…wherever we got called to go.

New outfits, some handmade props of fishing poles, fish, teddy bears, glasses and other items were stuffed in a tote bag with four puppets of various ages! We had a little boy and girl, a “Mom” type and of course the grey haired Grandpa who doubled as a fishing expert and a train conductor. The four characters played several parts in four different shows. Each show was followed by a take away craft…the children (and several adults) made fish out of colorful socks, paper bag fish, sunglasses, and even promise necklaces to help Mom around the home more! We prepped most of these crafts before we left with the help of friends and family! These were a great reminder for the kids of what they had just heard and witnessed in the show.

Our next step was to record the scripts in English. I asked several friends from my local community theatre group and some home schooled kids to come to record the voices. They were GREAT! One practice, then our soundman, Joel gave them the thumbs up to record. I was so thankful to my friends for helping. I could not believe how fast we accomplished the recordings and everyone had fun knowing their voices will be traveling to Italy soon.

The churches and communities we would be performing for mostly spoke Italian, so our next challenge was translation. After emailing the University of Tennessee located right in my backyard of Knoxville, a wonderful reply came from an Italian professor! She said she would be glad to help translate the shows into her native tongue. After a few weeks, we gathered to then record the shows onto a CD to take with us! Francesca, the professor and her visiting sister from Italy, along with her priest met at my office for a few hours of fun! I listened in awe as they brought so much life to the pages of the script. Of course there was Italian hand gesturing, wonderful facial expressions…non of which anyone would ever see but me and the recording engineer but it was magical. The translations were done so well…and they even corrected them as they went, making sure what they were saying was exactly what we wanted. I can not thank Father David and the ladies enough for their volunteered time on this project.
As the “actors” left we realized the two ladies were from Florence. Florence was one stop on our itinerary! It really is a small world. They demanded we put their Parrish on the list of places to perform so of course we did! It was great for them to see the voices come to life weeks later for their own children!

The week before we left for Europe we all gathered for a practice run at a local Festival in town. We had nice crowds and the kids seem to really enjoy the shows and interacting with the puppets afterwards. Our church was kind enough to print flyers to pass out to the crowds in English and Italian explaining the topics and why we felt puppet theatre was important. The message of love, giving, sharing and God’s salvation was able to be explained via the flyers in the local language once we arrived in Italy.

The shows in Bagni Di Lucca, Lucca, Pistoia, and Florence were super fun. The children all wanted to touch and play with the puppets. The adults also! Most of the mothers wanted to know how they were made! Maybe we should have brought more to sell as a fundraiser! Every location asked that we return and many friends were made this special week in Italy. The people are so appreciative and supportive. The crafts we did after each show also went over very well. Most of these towns do no offer many things for the children to do so it was nice for us to share the shows with them. I can not thank our puppeteers, crafty team members, sound and stage crew and all the volunteers enough for a glorious week of PUPPETS!!!

Thanks to everyone who has helped make this “little request” come true for our Italian friends!

We hope many other groups will ask for our puppets/crafts program! You can reach The Carideo Clan and Friends by emailing mcarideo@crye-leike.com for more information.

Preparing the crafts and Recording Italian was just as much fun!