Puppet master

Leah Kong of North Potomac says puppets are almost as real as the people who move them. She once made a puppet from a tennis ball.

The 6-year-old recently attended a performance of “The Magic Flute” at the Puppet Co. Playhouse, a center for exploration of the puppet arts, at Glen Echo Park in Glen Echo.

“It’s a good way to tell a story,” she says. “The show was about love.”

Puppetry is an art form that has evolved for centuries. The creativity of the field has been used to entertain children and adults alike.

This summer, the Puppet Co. Playhouse offers “Puppet Making for Kids,” two weeklong camps where children can make a hand puppet, a “Muppet”-style mouth puppet, a simple marionette and a simple rod puppet. The children also will visit backstage during a performance in the playhouse. The camps will take place June 18-22 and July 9-13.

Although students are given basic patterns and forms, they are encouraged to use their imaginations when making their characters, says Allan Stevens, president of the Puppet Co. Playhouse.

“When you are making puppets for fun, there are really no hard and fast rules,” Mr. Stevens says. “You could turn your garage or kitchen table into a puppetry studio.”

Being a professional puppeteer requires a lot of energy and strength, especially because many of the puppets are heavy, he says. However, the best puppeteers make it look easy. He has had an interest in puppets since age 4.

“I had seen some puppets displayed in a store window and started to make paper puppets,” Mr. Stevens says. “I also did puppet shows for birthdays in high school.”

Puppets are very powerful models for young children, says Ingrid Crepeau, master puppeteer at Dinorock Productions in Silver Spring. Ms. Crepeau is author of “A Show of Hands,” a book on puppetry. Her musical partner is Michele Valeri.

The touring dinosaur show includes string puppets, rod puppets, hand puppets and body puppets, where the puppeteer hides inside the body of the puppet and moves a controllable mouth.

“If you move it, it’s alive,” Ms. Crepeau says. “If you take a stuffed toy and jiggle it, they assume it’s alive. When children are 3 or 4, reality sets in. They know it’s not real, but they are willing to say, ‘OK, we’ll pretend it’s real.’ ”

Because puppets capture the attention of children, it is easy to teach children through the interactions of puppets, she says. Further, puppets can bring emotional healing to suffering children.

“A number of years ago, I made some puppets with the child life workers at Children’s Hospital in D.C.,” Ms. Crepeau says. “They used the puppets to help children talk about how they feel about their hospitalization. They will tell puppets things that they won’t tell you. They tell the puppets all kinds of things because they suspend reality.”

Puppetry is an expressive art form that inspires children to use their imaginations, says Bill Hopkins, president of the National Capital Puppetry Guild, the area guild that is chartered by the Puppeteers of America, a national nonprofit organization founded in 1937. The group meets every other month at the Puppet Co. Playhouse.

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