From Big Bird to Yoda, Marburn drama teacher shares love of puppets with students

The small stage at Marburn Academy suddenly filled with towering cardboard giraffes, zebras with movable legs, burlap gazelles and other safari animals constructed from papier-mache, brightly colored cloth, faux fur and feathers.

The "animals" began belting out the lyrics to “The Circle of Life.”

Certainly “The Lion King” with all its puppets and mask work might seem like an overly ambitious project for the small New Albany private school that serves students with learning disabilities, especially since students in middle and high school hadn’t performed for a live audience since 2019.

But most schools don’t have a puppet expert as their drama teacher.

“He really went all out,” said senior Summer Orban (Rafiki) about instructor Kevin Fish. “The puppets are very avant-garde, unconventional and creative.”

As Pumbaa, the beloved warthog, Leely Hittle thought she’d be wearing a onesie or maybe a mask to portray her character.

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But not with Mr. Fish, whose degree is in puppet arts, in charge.

Instead Hittle, a seventh-grader, wore a harness with a spectacularly drawn and painted Pumbaa made from cardboard. She spent a lot of time practicing how to walk with it.

“This is really good,” the 13-year-old said. “He even has a tongue.”

Fish said he felt puppets might be a great tool for his young actors to help them emote when they would most likely be wearing masks. (And they were, as the performance fell in early March before many mask mandates were lifted city and statewide.)

“We thought ‘Lion King’ might draw in some kids who would not normally be in theater and it would be the kind of show that could be performed effectively if we were fully masked,” Fish said. “That was the cause for the ambition.”

Add the fact that it gave Fish his first true opportunity during his decade with the school to showcase his puppet expertise to the full extent, and the "Lion King" proved to be the perfect show for Marburn.

“I grew up in a generation in which puppets were used as a way to tell stories,” Fish, 50, continued. “You get to design and actually create a character. The versatility of what you can do with puppets always draws me in.”

Six degrees of Jim Henson

Growing up in Delaware, Ohio, Fish found a love of art and puppets early on — of course, crediting puppeteer Jim Henson, of “The Muppets” and “Sesame Street” fame.

“I don’t think I’m alone in my answer — I owe all my love and passion for puppets to Jim Henson,” Fish said.

As a child, he also was fond of the “Star Wars” character Yoda — a puppet voiced and maneuvered by Frank Oz, one of Henson’s closet collaborators — and the puppet scene from “The Sound of Music” movie.

Still, it never occurred to him that puppets could become a career.

He enrolled at Ohio State University in 1990 to become an art teacher, where he found an affinity for illustration, prompting a transfer to the Columbus College of Art & Design.

Meanwhile, the 20-something joined the Columbus Puppet Guild to learn about the craft. He dropped out of CCAD for a variety of reasons and while trying to figure out his next steps he met someone who knew a head designer at the Jim Henson Company.

He toured one of their New York City-based shops and there, he asked other designers how they ended up working with puppets.

The answer? The puppetry program at the University of Connecticut

Nearing 30 and about to get married, Fish decided to go for his dream and enrolled in the highly competitive major at the East Coast school. It's one of two or three schools that offer a puppetry major.

“Miraculously, I got in,” Fish said. “It was two years in the program and it was really accelerated. I was working full-time putting on theater productions, too.”

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But during that time, he also met Henson’s wife (Henson died from a bacterial infection in 1990 at the age of 53) and children. He met puppeteers such as Caroll Spinney, who performed Big Bird for nearly five decades, and the man behind Mr. Snuffleupagus.

“I’ve now met so many people in Jim’s inner circle,” Fish said. “It’s like I was one degree of separation from the man I idolized.”

After graduating, he worked in stop animation, which he said combined a lot of his puppetry skills with illustration.

Then his wife’s job brought him back to central Ohio.

“That gave me a window that brought me back to my first passion — art education,” said Fish, a father of two.

A 'magical' process

After working a few years in the theater department at Worthington Schools, Fish was hired in 2011 at Marburn — but as the technology teacher. His work in animation gave him the background he needed for that position. He even started the first robotics team at the school.

“He’s always been so creative ever since I’ve known him,” said Jennifer Martin-Gledhill, associate head of the school. “Even when he was doing technology, he was creative.”

As the school grew, it became apparent they needed a drama department and Martin-Gledhill said Fish was a logical choice.

Over the years, he’d do projects that gave students and faculty a glimpse into Fish’s puppet expertise.

“It would always be something far grander than anything you ever expected,” Martin-Gledhill continued.

Fish said puppets have helped him connect with Marburn students — who might have dyslexia or attention issues — for a number of reasons, including overcoming stage fright.

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“This gives them something to perform with, something to shield them, and allows them to remember that the audience is focusing on the puppets and the character instead of them,” Fish said.

But puppets also represent something deeper, Fish continued.

“To take a concept that’s abstract and make it concrete — that's so great for our kids,” Fish said. “That’s what makes most of the work with puppets so important for this community.”

Seeing students explore drama with the puppets has been inspiring and Fish makes the impossible — like maneuvering a massive zebra — seem possible, Martin-Gledhill said.

And, with or without puppets, every performance or activity Fish does with students allows them to gain confidence.

“He helps them explore who they are and find their voice,” Martin-Gledhill said. “His process is really quite magical.”

Rave reviews

His students couldn’t agree more about the impact Fish has had on them.

“He’s really experimental, especially with ‘The Lion King’ and all the costumes, sets, makeup and puppets,” Orban said. “It’s been really fun to have all those components.”

Plus, he provides a very supportive learning environment, several students said, which they didn’t always have at other schools before coming to Marburn.

“Mr. Fish lets you take time to learn,” Hittle said, "and explains it in a way that you don’t have to keep asking.”

A humble Fish insists that’s simply the power of theater and puppets.

“The places I have seen the most transformation with theater is their sense of self-worth and confidence and their sense of empathy and perspective shifting,” Fish said. “When they step in someone else’s shoes, it’s one of the most visual ways to understand someone else’s perspective.”

award@dispatch.com

@AllisonAWard

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Marburn Academy teacher's puppets help kids with learning disabilities