The kindergartners were frolicking on their playground one Friday morning at Falk Laboratory School when long shadows fell across them. A weekly ritual had begun.
They turned toward the school door. Art teacher Cheryl Capezzuti was leading out a dozen or so towering, colorfully costumed characters. “It’s puppet time!” she cried.
The kindergartners ran to the giant puppets. They hugged them. They played patty-cake with them. They joined hands with them and danced in a circle to songs from Capezzuti’s phone.
After 15 minutes, the puppets returned to the art room of this K-8 school and helped each other out of the costumes. Some of the school’s older students emerged.
One of them (Falk withholds students’ names) said she loves performing for younger schoolmates. “It’s really nice to see their faces turn into smiles when you walk out the door. ‘Yay, you’re here!’ The excitement is so happy and fun and teary at the same time.”
Capezzuti is a leading artist in two rare genres: giant puppets and lint sculptures. She makes both with repurposed materials such as tablecloths, homework sheets and fuzz from dryer filters. She says she likes “using things people don’t see as valuable.” She seeks to publicize waste, repurpose it and connect its past to its future. “I try not to just make work but make stories.”
Capezzuti teaches giant puppetry in her Falk classes and a school club, plus youth and adult workshops at her Brighton Heights home. She also runs a summer camp there. She stocks a free Puppets to Go loan program at the Carnegie One Braddock library.
Kindergartners hug giant puppets at Falk Laboratory School. Photo by Grant Segall.
The latest of her many shows will open at 11 a.m. on March 21 at Art & Education at the Hoyt, 124 E. Leasure Ave., New Castle. A reception will take place from noon to 2 p.m.
Her puppets range from 4 to 12 feet tall. Construction begins with a cardboard box for the head, a few dowels for the torso, and other dowels for the moveable arms and hands. Then the puppet is covered with lots of materials, such as paint, pipe cleaners, crumpled paper, cloth and lint.
Some of the students’ creations are pure fantasy. Others resemble animals … sort of. One Falk puppeteer calls her puppet “half woodpecker, half fox.” Another calls hers “a unicorn with a pink hockey stick.”
The costumes cover the performers’ bodies and heads but let them see, hear, breathe, and move. Most performers don’t reveal their identities. They either keep silent or disguise their voices.
“You can be like a secret part of yourself,” a performer said after the show. Another said, “I have to bite my lip not to talk. I want to be like ‘Hi’ and ‘Can we be friends?’ and ‘I love you!’”
Capezzuti grew up in Allison Park and went to Penn State, where she learned puppetry. She’s gone on to win many grants and stage many exhibits and shows at venues such as the Byham Theater, Lincoln Center, the National Puppetry Festival, be Galleries, Three Rivers Arts Festival Gallery, and, during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, local front lawns. She’s been an artist in residence at Pittsburgh International Airport, Duds ‘N Suds laundromat and many other places.
She runs what she calls The National Lint Project. More than 1,000 people have mailed her material from their dryer filters: lint with bits of receipts, tickets, paper clips and whatnot. They’ve also sent reminiscences about their washed clothes. If they supply a year’s worth of filtered stuff, she’ll use most of it in big sculptures and send them a tiny one with a QR code linked to their notes.
Puppets make a conga line at Riverview Park. Photo by Grant Segall.
Capezzuti often stages puppet parades and shows during local events, such as the Pittsburgh parks’ Roving Art Cart stops, Bloomfield’s yearly Halloween festival and Downtown’s First Night. Several of these shows have been directed by Kellee VanAken, Seton Hill University’s arts dean.
At many events, Capezzuti brings empty costumes and invites participants to try them on. During last October’s Riverview Park Day, several youths donned puppets and staged an impromptu parade.
“They don’t know each other,” Capezzuti said that day. “They jump in and make their own parade and act silly together. The way we build community is through shared experiences and joy and celebration.”
The youths’ audience included former Mayor Ed Gainey. “I love them,” he said. “Being outside of who they are normally, that’s a good thing.”
Despite slashed federal arts funding, Capezzuti thinks puppets will remain staples both of celebrations and protests at this moment in time. “There’s a magic to it, being bigger than life, with power almost like a superhero, giving that joy.”