Puppets

 Our church in Columbia was invited to do a Vacation Bible School in Philadelphia, PA in July, 1980.  A group of Singles would go.  They wanted me to put together a group of 4 puppeteers to present puppet shows to the kids.  I had never worked with puppets before, so I took on the challenge.
 I had to write five puppet scripts to be performed one each day.  Each script was 3 pages long and involved 4 separate characters.  Each character had a different personality.  2 guys and 2 girls.  Before writing, I researched other scripts to get a feel for how puppets would sound.  I then got to work on my scripts.  Each one had conflict between the puppets.  Each one had to have some humor in them.  And, each one had to have a moral lesson.  The kids attending would be from pre-school to 6th grade, so the hardest part of writing the scripts was that I had to write them so the youngest ones could understand them, and the older ones wouldn't be bored by them.  I also wrote the scripts so that the first day would connect with the second day and build to the third day and so on.  So by the fifth day, we concluded with what we had learned the previous days.  The stories included topics like stealing, bullying, lying, and more.
 I cast 3 other people to perform with me.  We each had to practice with our puppets, so that the words out of mouths conformed with the movement of our hands.  That was kind of hard at first, but we worked out like rhythms in music.  We also found an old refrigerator box that we used to stand behind and put the puppets above the edge of the box.  I tried to write the scripts so that each puppeteer didn't have to hold up his or her puppet all during each show.  One's arm could get tired.
 When we got to Philadelphia, we found that we had two different locations to do the puppet shows, as our group of Singles had two different VBS's.  Each location was outside in a schoolyard.  We had a van to transport us from one school to the other.  When we got to the first school, we had to sweep off broken glass from the area were the kids were going to sit.  Apparently, there was some gang activity in the area where we were, and they would party at night.  Once we finished at the first school, we would pack up and drive over to the other school to do a show there.  Before we started, we once again had to sweep off all of the broken glass.  Welcome to inner-city Philadelphia.
 All of the kids loved the puppets, although most called them "muppets", because they were used to "Sesame Street".  That was okay.  Whatever worked for them.  The shows were well-received, and my goal to appeal to all of the kids there was a success.
 The next few stories will also be on our week-long trip to Philadelphia.  Enjoy.