WEST LIBERTY, Iowa -- A small West liberty theater is reaching audiences around the world with a tiny stage and just a few performers. Monica Leo, the Eulenspiegel Puppet Theatre’s lead puppeteer, has been creating a magical world inhabited by puppets for 45 years.
On Monday morning, the little theater filled with kids and their families, looking for a different way to enjoy the age-old tale of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf.
Leo, dressed in a colorful cape, took the stage with two suitcases. She opened them up, made a stage and took out each character of the beloved children’s tale: Little Red Riding Hood, mom, grandma, and the wolf. As she narrated, she moved her wrist to maneuver the puppets, and she also voiced each character.
“One of the things I love about puppetry is you can really be a jack of all trades,” she told News 8. “You can build [the puppets], you can write stories, you can put it all together and make a show. You can add music. It’s music, movement, visual art, writing, the whole thing.”
“But the thing I love most about it is you can create a world and invite other people into your world.”
With a background in visual arts, she takes inspiration for the handmade puppets from the world around her. But she soon learned that it wasn’t about how the puppets looked.
“One of the important things about making the puppets is that it’s not just visual. It’s movement-oriented too because what the puppet does is at least as important to what the puppet looks like.”
Monday’s show she used miniature marionets, “Bohemian style rod marionettes,” she explained. “They have a type of control that was originally created in Bohemia, which is now of course part of the Czech Republic.”
The strings attached to the puppets’ knees and are moved with just a slight turn of the wrist, which turns the control, a cigarette-sized cylinder to which strings are attached. Another finger can lift other strings, tied to the hands.
Leo’s passion for puppeteering has been going strong for 45 years now and the Eulenspiegel Puppet Theater, will be celebrating its big anniversary in March.
“It goes way back into my childhood. My parents were refugees from Nazi Germany.” The puppets bear the unmistakable features of Germany’s marionettes, lifelike, yet exaggerated.
“It’s more like a caricature,” Leo describes them.
The puppets’ home may be in West Liberty, but they are often on tour across the United Staes.
“We’ve performed in 31 states and four countries, most extensively in Germany and Austria, but also Japan and the Czech Republic.”
Leo is not ready to retire any time soon, “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do,” she exclaimed. But she is always looking to develop the next generation of puppeteers.
One of them is Stephanie Vallez, who had no experience as a puppeteer, but came to the theater to offer up dolls she created. It was a natural fit.
“I started out doing other things helping out,” she said. Now the Outreach Director is multi-tasking, doing shows, writing music, and more.
“All the different disciplines that come together to do this art form, that’s fun,” she said.
Leo agreed, adding that the skills that go into even a one-woman show, include teamwork.
“It’s what they call a 21st-century skill because you have to work with people. Even if you’re doing the show by yourself, like the one I did today, it was directed, it was co-written by someone else. Even if it’s one person that’s visible, it’s always a collaboration.”
It’s these skills that make puppetry an art form that's very much alive, she said.