The Magic of Marionettes for ages 4-7

                                                           The Magic of Marionettes

Monday July 21st- Friday July 25th

9:30am-12:30pm

Ages 4-7

Come explore the wonderful world of marionettes with Kim Profaci of The Modern Marionette Company. This program will provide students with an opportunity to learn the basics of marionette manipulation. Using these skills along with role playing and improvisation, they will recreate scenes from well known stories. Also throughout the week, students will work on building their own marionette. These original puppets will make their debut in a small performance for family and friends on the final day of camp.

Kim Profaci and The Modern Marionette Company have been capturing the imaginations­ of the young and the old, and everyone in between, for over twenty years.

The craft of puppet-making and the art of teaching and performing come naturally to Kim. She was raised in Irvington, New York in a highly creative family of artists and educators. She earned her bachelor’s in English from Boston College and her master’s in education from Fordham University. And in modern dance class, she developed a fascination for movement and an understanding of body language and nuance that are central to puppetry.

Kim envisions and builds the puppets, props, and sets using every imaginable resource. Driftwood becomes a puppet’s limbs, blades of grass morph into a praying mantis, and scarves take on a life of their own. She adapts classic stories, such as Tomie DePaola’s Strega Nona, and has developed her own take on music legend Elvis Presley. With the right inspiration, Kim and her marionettes can bring magic to any character and tell any tale. As she says, “It’s a great joy for me to inspire children to want to create for themselves. And to watch adults look on with a sense of wonder is a special experience all its own.”

Modern Marionette is based in New Jersey and Long Island, NY and is available to perform and present hands-on workshops at schools, museums, libraries, and community events. Audiences range from very young children who fall in love with the puppets to memory care residents who respond to the music and the storytelling with remarkable vigor.