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Young Schaumburg puppeteers learn from masters

A group of Schaumburg-area students who've started using puppets to help develop their English skills were shown the highest form of their new art Friday by a professional puppeteering troupe.

Opera in Focus is an 18-year-old company whose current members perform a wide variety of shows and operas at the Rolling Meadows Park District Theater, using some of the most technically sophisticated and realistic-looking puppets in the world.

Its four active puppeteers dropped in to demonstrate the evolution of their craft to students in the Playful Puppeteers, a club that started two months ago at Churchill School in Schaumburg.

The 11 members, spanning grades 3 through 6, come from a variety of ethnic and native language backgrounds including Korean, Indian, Spanish and Serbian. A 12th member moved back to Egypt during winter break.

Bilingual Resource Teacher Arlene Duval and Instructional Assistant Nancy Quintana hit upon the idea for the club in early November.

“We started the club to encourage oral language development,” Duval explained.

She said the use of puppets seemed like a fun way to help develop the student's practice of their second language. Particularly when concealed inside the school's old but attractive puppet theater that was found in storage, the students lose the inhibitions and shyness that typically afflict those learning a new tongue, Duval said.

Justin Snyder, principal puppeteer of Opera in Focus, showed students a variety of different styles of puppet leading up to the very complex ones used in their shows. Among the examples were an old Indonesian shadow puppet and a Muppet-like old man who's a combination of a hand and rod puppet.

Students quickly got the hang of using the different kinds of puppets, with one making his classmates laugh as he made a fluorescent green ostrich marionette seem to peck at the lunch of the girl beside him.

“It's kind of like playing a musical instrument,” Snyder said of the simple yet skillful art of puppetry. “The more you use it, the more you'll know how everything works.”

Students even got the chance to handle one of the elaborate puppets used in the company's shows. That's something that even most visitors to Opera in Focus don't get to do, Snyder said.

One student commented on the creepiness of the young woman's lifelike movements, which Snyder said is a common remark but really a compliment.

Compared to simpler or more stylized types of puppets, those in the Opera in Focus shows are meant to seem like miniature human beings. Many audience members have commented that they sometimes forgot they were watching a puppet show, Snyder said.

As only the troupe's regular theater is able to demonstrate the full capabilities of the puppets, Snyder gave each student free passes to attend a show within the next year with their parents. He also promised them an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour afterward, only because they were members of the Playful Puppeteers club.

While the art of puppetry has become a rarer thing in the U.S. as people have become more focused on animation, video games and other less tactile performance arts, it continues to be a serious and revered thing in many other countries, particularly in Asia, Snyder said.

“You guys are the future of the art form, so don't let us down!” Snyder encouraged the students.

  Professional puppeteers Barry Southerland, left, and Shayne Snyder display different styles of puppets Friday when they visited Churchill School in Schaumburg. Bill Zars/bzars@dailyherald.com
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