Like puppets? Like excitement and laughter, and having your kids engaged in some old-fashioned, zero-screen-time fun?
This August, Children’s Fairyland in Oakland is throwing a weekend-long party to celebrate the 70th anniversary of its Storybook Puppet Theater. And the nation’s oldest continuously running puppet theater has invited a lot of big names to participate in this “Puppet Fair Weekend.”
Children’s Fairyland puppet theater director Randal Metz works on a live puppet show backstage in Oakland, Calif., Thursday, June 27, 2026. Metz, who said he started at age 10, has been a puppeteer for 57 years. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
There will be performances by the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, whose creator worked with Disney, Steven Spielberg and “Star Trek” and whose theater is a historic-cultural landmark in L.A. The San Francisco Bay Area Puppet Guild will demonstrate arts and crafts, Fratello Marionettes will perform “Jack and the Beanstalk” and the Magical Moonshine Theatre will do “Puppylocks and the Three Bears.”
Kids and adults can even go backstage at the park’s puppet theater, to see who pulls the strings. “Audiences of every age will be mesmerized when the world of puppetry comes to life for one magical weekend,” the organizers write. “It’s like Coachella for people who love puppets, puppet shows and puppeteers.”
Details: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. August 29-30 at 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland; $20 for adults and $18 for ages 17 and under, fairyland.org/fairyland-calendar