Central Florida Puppet Guild pulls strings to make sure you have fun at Sunday’s Puppet Slam

Puppets, along with clowns and plane rides, fall into that weird category of “Things Adults Fear That Children Do Not.” Perhaps it’s because children don’t realize the inherent creepiness of being controlled by an unseen master who jerks characters around on strings. Aren’t we all just puppets, if you think about it? Puppets of the government, of societal expectations, of our jobs – but the last one we really don’t mind, we swear! Ha ha ha! What were we saying? … Oh yes, puppets. Inexplicably creepy yet fascinating, puppetry is a performance medium that has waxed and waned in relevance over time.

But this week the Central Florida Puppet Guild puts all mixed feelings about our felt friends to rest with their annual Puppet Slam, a showcase featuring skits and short films starring handmade puppets. The local puppet scene’s (yes, that is an actual thing) stellar reputation combined with Central Florida’s finest puppeteer talents guarantee a quality show we’d see voluntarily – no strings attached! (You’re welcome; we thought that was a great pun too.) Now that we’ve confronted our fear of stringed characters, we need to tackle our fear of clowns. There’s one beckoning us into the woods right now, claiming he’s part of a national trend, but we bet he’s just a misunderstood street performer with a perfectly good reason for behaving erratically! 

7 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 16 | The Venue, 511 Virginia Drive | 407-412-6895 | facebook.com/puppetslam | $8

This article appears in Oct 12-18, 2016.