Marionette In Motion

From the bestselling author of The Boy Who Drew Monsters and The Stolen Child comes a modern take on the Orpheus and Eurydice Myth—A Suspenseful tale of romance and enchantment In the Old City of Québec, Kay Harper falls in love with a puppet in the window of the Quatre Mains, a toy shop that is never open. She is spending her summer working as an acrobat with the cirque while her husband, Theo, is translating a biography of the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Late one night, Kay fears someone is following her home. Surprised to see that the lights of the toy shop are on and the door is open, she takes shelter inside. The next morning Theo wakes up to discover his wife is missing. Under police suspicion and frantic at her disappearance, he obsessively searches the streets of the Old City. Meanwhile, Kay has been transformed into a puppet, and is now a prisoner of the back room of the Quatre Mains, trapped with an odd assemblage of puppets from all over the world who can only come alive between the hours of midnight and dawn. The only way she can return to the human world is if Theo can find her and recognize her in her new form. So begins the dual odyssey of Keith Donohue’s The Motion of Puppets: of a husband determined to find his wife, and of a woman trapped in a magical world where her life is not her own.

Paul McPharlin is one of the 20th century's most important contributors to the art of puppetry. Over a period of nine years he created some 20 productions with marionettes, rod puppets, hand puppets and shadow figures. He was also a prolific writer whose technical, theoretical and historical works contributed significantly to a puppetry revival. His book The Puppet Theatre in America is considered the definitive history of American puppetry. Though shy and aloof, McPharlin was also energetic. He had an ability to bring people together and used this knack to found a national puppetry organization, Puppeteers of America. Besides the author's extensive research on McPharlin and puppetry, the book draws on significant contributions from McPharlin's wife, puppeteer and author Marjorie Batchelder McPharlin, who allowed the use of her 18-year correspondence with Paul in the creation of the book. Chapters take the reader through McPharlin's childhood as a loner in Detroit, his maturation and education in New York, and his early, erratic and often unsuccessful attempts at making a living. His puppeteering years, 1929 to 1937, are detailed, as are the later years that saw him first working for the WPA and then being drafted into the army to serve in World War II at age 38. He continued making important contributions to the art of puppetry until a brain tumor took his life at age 45 in 1948. Appendices present two of McPharlin's plays, The Barn at Bethlehem: A Christmas Play and Punch's Circus. Another appendix details puppetry imprints, including yearbooks, plays, handbooks, worksheets and books. A fourth lists Paul McPharlin's Puppeteers, members of the Marionette Fellowship of Detroit.

DIVHow to construct and manipulate puppets, build little theaters, set up and furnish a stage, light scenes, and more. Over 200 illustrations. /div