Marionette:Kirtap of the Baumkinder troupe

The 15 marionettes of this donation come from a troupe called Baumkinder. Drama students at Mansfield University in Mansfield, PA, used them in the mid-1960s. The students used the hand-crafted figures to present stories of their own making at school, libraries, hospitals, colleges, and universities, as well as on local television shows. The puppeteer group worked under the direction of Ruth Baum, a children's librarian who had stumbled across a book about marionettes. She found herself immediately captivated by the combination of several kinds of play that marionettes involved, including modeling the figures, stagecraft, dramatics, design, and storytelling. Baum described the process of making and painting the puppet head, constructing the body, and designing and making clothes, as being integral to developing the marionette's personality. "By the time he's finished, he's a real person and an old friend. So you never let him slip back into the inamimate state," she explained.