In 1978, Trey Stokes was in his senior year in high school. He had a passion for puppetry, but he had no idea what to do with it -- until he saw Star Wars.
"I thought: 'Oh my God, I've got to do that. He must have an amazing job.'"
Now, over 20 years later, Stokes has realized his dream. In 1988, he got his first job as a puppeteer for a movie -- The Blob. Since then, Stokes has worked on numerous films.
Stokes still shakes his head when he thinks of himself as a young teen staring at the big screen wondering how to get there. But he did his research and figured theater was the thing.
He majored in cinema production at the University of Southern California and then went on to the Bob Baker Marionette Theater -- one of the oldest puppeteering schools in the country.
Stokes loves his work and loves the new direction movie puppetry is going. We're in the age of computer graphics where the "puppets" are manipulated with a joystick.
"We find that for every 100 people who know how to operate the equipment, there's only one in 100 who has any kind of aptitude for animation," he says. "You still need the stop motion and animation skills."
The movie life is a straining one, even for puppeteers. Stokes has to work long hours, sometimes well into the night and on weekends. Projects can drag on for years, and that makes it hard to keep up the energy and focus.
But the other challenge is one shared by all puppeteers in the movie and theater business -- "making people think that something exists, that doesn't."
Bob Shimer, an Indiana puppeteer and ventriloquist, faces the same challenge.
He often takes his favorite puppet, Drango, to church with him to greet attendants. Sometimes adults refuse to play along, preferring to talk to Shimer. Naturally, Drango the dragon is a little miffed. But it doesn't take long for the puppeteer to drag older folks into the conversation.
The beauty of puppets is that people will talk to puppets when they may not talk to people. Shimer learned that lesson when his late mother, who suffered from Alzheimer's, cheered up whenever Drango came into the room.
"She wouldn't remember anyone else, but she would remember Drango," he says. "She said he was the only one that understood her."
Now Shimer takes his puppets into nursing homes and hospitals. Often kids whisper secrets into Drango's ear and Shimer never butts in. He lets the children interact with the puppet however they feel comfortable.
"I try to be honest with kids. If they ask Drango if he's real, Drango says he's a puppet and then asks the children if they're puppets too."
That childhood fascination with puppets also drew Bev Johnson into the field. It was her mother that introduced her to the world of puppets.
"My mother was a puppeteer and used to do marionette performances in libraries," says Johnson. She fell into her mother's footsteps. A teacher librarian in charge of the fine arts program, she now brings puppets into the school as well.
"Kids that are interested in puppets are usually the ones who wouldn't be able to stand up and put on a show, but somehow they can do it with a puppet. They're usually quick with their timing and they do their performances while improvising their lines. They can get very engrossed."
Alain Boisvert says his love of puppetry comes to life when he sees the look on children's faces. Like Shimer, he recognizes the healing qualities of puppetry.
His company built rod puppets for an education film designed to help children with leukemia deal with the illness. "We normally never do this type of educational work, as we're more interested in the artistic aspects of puppetry art," he says. "This being said, it was one of the most touching works because we had to meet many children and afterwards I could see how the puppets helped for this specific project."
The beauty of puppetry is its uncanny ability to bring the worlds of children and adults together. "It's very fulfilling. It demands an openness to art. It's a very satisfying way of communicating ideas, or simply expressing the beauty and diversity of what surrounds us."