Below the Playboard with Pete the Cat
Amid cranes in distant and adjacent lots, signifying Atlanta’s everlasting progress, and just above the continuous drone of expressway traffic, sits the Center for Puppetry Arts. The trill of chirping birds drift up and over the white noise of endless motors as though an enchanted dimension has been superimposed over a bustling metropolitan. Time is slowed here. Children on the yellow, purple and green playground run and play. The Center is a world unto itself, but lately a certain grooviness floats in the air.
“Pete the Cat,” based on the beloved children’s book series by Kim and James Dean, is back on stage for a second run at the Center. The show will run through May 29.
Though the Center sometimes produces shows from other theaters, their “Pete the Cat” show was created completely in-house with feedback from the series creators. And if the first run was a hit, this day demonstrated just how popular the show still is.
Inside the Center, teachers shepherded children to and from restrooms. Parents guided their children into the gift shop to choose Pete souvenirs.
Seated second row in the auditorium, Decatur, Georgia native Diana Blake sat with her husband and their relatives who were visiting from Vermont. She recalled Pete the Cat when he was only a painting and James Dean was participating in art shows around the Southeast. “Now [the kids] know Pete all the way in Vermont! They have the books and the board games!” A trip to Center for Puppetry Arts has been an annual tradition for the family for the past several years. The oldest child with them had been thrilled when she found out this year’s show featured Pete.
A young woman cradling a child just shy of a year old, a relative of Blake’s, eagerly joined in to exclaim about the inspiration of watching Pete evolve from a “kind of weird” painting into something so wonderful, going from thought to picture books to being produced on stage.
Then, a glimpse of Pete’s tail popping up over the playboard.
That’s all it took for screams and claps to begin and then crescendo with the appearance of Pete the Cat himself about to rise from bed for his day. The show dramatized scenes from several books including “Robo-Pete,” “Pete the Cat and His Magic Sunglasses,” “Pete’s Big Lunch,” and “Scuba Cat,” all adapted for the stage and presented in a linear storyline.
Children helped Pete solve math problems. They stretched their arms toward bubbles drifting from overhead, and laughed uproariously when Pete’s vacuum malfunctioned.
Artistic Director Jon Ludwig has been with the Center since 1978. After the show, after the children and chaperons have filed out, Ludwig sits in the emptied auditorium on the front row. He describes his role in a simple way: as overseeing the writing and directing of new material.
“I’m sorry. I don’t usually interject.” The voice comes from Marketing Director Therese Aun. She’d been standing to the side, content to listen until that moment. “Jon downplays it. Jon is the artistic director, and that team is led by him. Designers, musicians, puppeteers. There’s a vision that’s being executed.” She moves closer. “It’s such a collaborative art. The script changes, evolves as the performance evolves in rehearsals. There’s somebody at the helm, saying ‘Hmmm…I’m not feeling that or something’s not right.’”
That somebody is Ludwig. He listens quietly, humbly, to the praise.
“We look for the visual, magical, and astonishing,” Ludwig says.
He draws a strong distinction between material suited for theater and what works best for puppetry. “Writing for theater is actor-based and mostly dialog. In our shows, we are looking for the visual element. That’s what made Pete so perfect.” Pete’s look, the long, thin feline neck for example, is well-suited for the puppetry stage. “If you put an actor in a suit, you’re not going to get that.”
Anna Williford, the puppeteer who played Pete the Cat, stands nearby. A rail runs along the front row, and Williford alternates between brushing her fingertips against the rail and leaning lightly against it. She talks with an easy smile and bursts of laughter. She has just performed two 55-minute shows back-to-back.
Williford names a scene from “Scuba Cat” as one of the most captivating of the show, a scene with minimal dialog. “It’s just introducing each of the fish and the sea creatures. But you get to see all of these new puppets, and how they move is so unique. Each puppeteer is able to embody how that particular animal would move.” Her tone is lighthearted but earnest.
The puppets are unique not only in design but in capabilities. The physical stamina needed by puppeteers at the Center is something Williford thinks a lot of people don’t realize, the word “puppet” possibly bringing to mind something small like sock puppets. But the puppets at the Center vary in size and weights. Moving them continuously and keeping them “alive” throughout a performance inspired the Center’s cast for “Rudolph,” a show in which Williford took part, to take before-and-after photos of their flexed biceps. The bulge of their muscles after the show’s run was easy to see.
Williford is tired after the day’s “Pete the Cat” performances. But she takes her time, searching for the right words to explain the reactions of excitement and wonderment Pete gets with each show. “There’s something very friendly and sweet about the cat itself. And I think he’s trying to understand his world and navigate it, which is exactly what kids are doing, too.”
The importance of puppets in education and character development is a belief that guides the Center from creative concept to stage performance. To that end, Ludwig looks for stories that inspire imagination and community. “One of my favorite quotes is from a puppet theater in England,” Ludwig says. “They always say the first question they ask is ‘where’s the love?’”
It makes sense then that the Center embraces Pete. Love, friendship, and appreciation are themes that appear throughout Pete the Cat’s adventures whether in picture-book form or adapted for stage.
“I’m so happy Pete is on this year because kids need resilience right now,” Aun says. “And if anything, Pete goes with the flow. Pete doesn’t stay down. He grooves on. He figures out a way with his friends to just keep on keeping on.”
To find a “Pete the Cat” showtime and purchase tickets, stop by the Center for Puppetry Arts’ “Pete the Cat” page at puppet.org.
