In the summer of 1961, Nancy Schmale saw Bil and Cora Baird’s puppet play, “The Magic Onion” featured in Woman’s Day magazine and persuaded her neighbor, Alice Swann that they should put on the show even though neither of them had any experience performing with puppets. Swann and Schmale were neighbors in Concord Park, a subdivision that Civil Rights activist turned housing developer Moris Milgram had designed as an inter-racial community in the suburbs of Philadelphia. The two housewives (who had seven children between them) went on to perform at the1967 Canadian Centennial Puppeteers of America Festival in Waterloo, Ontario. The 2023 festival exhibit therefore celebrates puppetry as an inspiring means of realizing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of “beloved community” with a display of puppets and archival documents tracing the development of the Wonderland Puppet Theatre.

Curated by Dr. Paulette Richards, the exhibit will include a reading from her new book, Object Performance in the Black Atlantic, workshops on digitizing personal archives, photographing puppets for posterity, and a panel discussion with children of the Concord Park puppeteers. Admission to the exhibit and ancillary programming is free and open to the public as part of our Community Days Program.

Workshops are free and open to the public but will be ticketed for capacity. Click Here to Visit Ticketing

For a full schedule: of hours: Click Here to Visit Community Days

Photo: Alice Swann and Nancy Schmale at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City