The fire. The funeral of burned marionettes. The loss of the building that brought the Tulsa, Oklahoma native to Peterborough. Those moments are still fresh in Ted Leach’s mind.
Twenty-five years later, the founder of the New England Marionette Opera is still grieving over the loss of his puppet company. On Friday, Leach unveiled a plaque and held a ceremony, inviting former members of the company and the board of the Mariposa Museum. The museum operates the space once filled by an elaborate theater, complete with bridges several feet above the ground where puppeteers tugged at eight-foot strings (they call it manipulation) and delighted an international audience.
The plaque honors the anniversary of his puppet company, which started May 15, 1992 and ended Jan. 1, 1999 when a fire gutted the building. Ninety days later, Leach sold the site, which was also the former home of the Monadnock Ledger, the newspaper Leach bought in 1979.
“The loss was just total, there was nothing left,” said Leach. “With any creative endeavor, there’s two components you really need: one is financing, which we had. And the other is the passion, which I didn’t have. It just didn’t come back.”
That sadness was still present Thursday among company members. They talked about, the funeral they held after the fire in the burned out building, where they said goodbye to all their beloved characters.
“It’s a profound sense of loss,” said Trisha Hill of Jaffrey, who started with the group in 1993 and stayed with the company until the fire. ” It’s just heartbreaking. It still is to this day.”
Dave Szehi, who worked with the company for two years before leaving to buy Harlow’s Pub, was the first person Leach and artistic director Roger DuPen hired. Szehi helped construct the theater and also had a background in sculpting and helped DuPen make the puppets.
“I was the first schmoe that wandered in off the street,” said Szehi, who stayed with the company for two years. “It’s one of the favorite – the best thing I’ve ever experienced. I really miss it.”
Szehi’s introduction to puppetry was identical to most of the other company members. People like Sharon Monahan, who was with the theater for four years. Monahan moved to Peterborough in the mid-90s and was looking for “odd jobs” to support her children. She saw Leach was hiring an advertising sales person for the theater.
“When I was interviewing for that, doing what I do now, he said, ‘You talk with your hands, I want you to be a manipulator instead,’ and I went ‘OK,’” Monahan said. “If somebody walked in the door and seemed lost, Ted gave you a role to play.”
Alana Korda, of Jaffrey, worked with the Marionette Opera from the first performance to the last. Korda, a former office manager at the Monadnock Ledger, was working at a local magazine when Leach contacted her.
“I was looking for something to occupy my time,” Korda said. “I figured if it was something Ted was going to do, it was going to be interesting.”
And it was.
In the first season, Szehi played Amahl for “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” He remembered the panic that set in when a puppeteer would get a string stuck on a prop and how the puppets floated and slumped on stage.
“We had a bit of a learning curve at the beginning,” Szehi said.
But it didn’t take long. When Trisha Hill, a Jaffrey resident and a friend of Korda’s, joined, the company had improved. She remembers watching the puppeteers move the strings, crossing over each other without getting tangled.
“It was magic,” Hill said.
After the fire, Hill joined a group (with Monahan, Korda and former company member Scott Gardner) called Phoenix Marionettes, which put on 4-5 performances two years ago. Leach donated the least fire-damaged heads and body parts from the New England Marionette Company to the cause.
“We had them alive again, it was awesome,” Hill said.
Gardner moved to California shortly after. Like it’s original company, the Phoenix Marionettes just stopped.
So why did the New England Marionette Company, the only one like it in the United States, never start up again?
“The heart of it was Ted,” Hill said. “And if Ted felt like he could heal enough to get back in, I think many of us would have been right there with him,”
There was still joy at the small gathering. Many of the former company members laughed inside the lobby of the Mariposa Museum, which used to serve as a box office for the Marionette Opera.
Marilyn Weir of Peterborough, Kelen Geiger of Rindge and Lorraine Gilman of Brattleboro, Vermont talked to each other Friday. The three met each other through the company and have remained close friends.
“It’s fabulous,” said Marilyn Weir of the gathering. Weir was with the company for six years. “Most of us don’t get to see each other very often – it’s not very often we’re all here.”
Gilman, a graduate of Ringling Brothers Clown College, remembered how she got involved. She wrote a letter to Leach in 1993 and asked him about the theater.
“He said, ‘Come up,’” Gilman said. “So I came up for a tour and they got me on the bridge and put a puppet in my hands and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m staying.’”
Gilman grew into the theater. She started as a performer before DuPen put her to work making props. She learned to sculpt and made the molds for the puppet heads, which were made out of Neoprene. She also made specialty marionettes, like a camel, which she estimates took her about 100 hours to complete. After the fire, Gilman made puppetry her career. She went to graduate school and got a degree in the art from the University of Connecticut in 2008. She teaches puppetry to children and works with a couple of companies in Boston.
“It’s a really incredible experience to have this type of art here, for as long as it was here,” Gilman said.