Creative duo's giant puppets hold mirror up to culture

Jan Burger and Donovan Zimmerman want to change the world. So they build puppets. Spider-size puppets, people-size puppets and puppets as tall as houses, all bearing big messages. The puppets appear in evening-length shows and at parades and protests, and they have proven expressive of their creators' views.

The pair's troupe, Paperhand Puppet Intervention, is one of the hottest draws in Chapel Hill, where their annual summer shows can attract more than 1,200 fans in a single night to UNC-Chapel Hill's outdoor Forest Theatre, with many returning on subsequent nights to relive the magic.

Paperhand has also branched across the Triangle, with performances at the N.C. Museum of Art and Raleigh Little Theatre. Zimmerman and Burger do artistic residencies at schools. And they're a popular mainstay at Raleigh First Night and Artsplosure and will be among the featured acts at the city's first Puppet Fusion festival next week. The festival will be held at the Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts.

"As the Crow Flies: Tales from Four Directions" -- a 2006 production that Paperhand will revive for Puppet Fusion -- exemplifies the pair's ability to open people's eyes to world events, history and spirituality. The 75-minute performance features the true story of a librarian in Iraq who saved 30,000 books from destruction during the U.S. invasion. It also includes a darkly funny Russian folk tale about a village that elects a foolish leader and suffers the consequences, a version of the classic John Henry railroad worker tale and the story of the enlightenment of the Gautama Buddha.

"They give you a lot of meat, artistic meat, to savor," says Jef Lambdin, a mime who has worked on Paperhand projects. He also hired Zimmerman and Burger to make puppets for an educational theater company he used to run.

"In any culture, good art is a reflection of the strength of the culture," Lambdin says. "These guys are bodybuilders for our culture."

Terri Dollar, Artsplosure's program director, recruited Paperhand for First Night after seeing them at the Forest Theatre years ago. The New Year's Eve "People's Procession" now features Rhea, a 60-by-20-foot Paperhand creature that takes 50 marchers to operate.

"You get this feeling that you're part of this bigger-than-yourself world when you're watching one of their shows,"she says. "There's a pretty strong social commentary with most of their shows. But I think it's important for us to see that in a way that is not just reading it on the page."

Magic creatures born

Zimmerman and Burger create their creatures year-round in the dismantled dye quarters of a former cotton mill on the Haw River. The place is provided free by Jordan Properties. With broken windows, no heat or air conditioning and no running water, the old mill can be uncomfortable. But where else could a 20-foot Buddha reside in its off season? Or an extinct silver Irish elk?

All along the brick walls, and piled on shelves and in boxes, are scores of familiar characters that Burger and Zimmerman have created over the years, using primarily papier-mache, paints and fabric (and water toted from the gas station a few doors down, which is also where you'll find their bathroom).

The studio is also spacious enough to fit Paperhand's dozens of committed volunteers, who gather to help make the puppets and masks, and to rehearse.

The wiry, soft-spoken Burger says he and the more chatty Zimmerman often disagree as they hone their characters and themes, with input from roughly 20 puppeteers and musicians. Burger, for instance, is inclined each year to eliminate what has become a popular climax at their outdoor summer shows, when one of its largest characters (the Buddha one year, an ox the next) walks into the audience, prompting its fans to crowd around it and touch it. It's a special moment of connection for fans of any age. But it's a nightmare for the puppeteers, whose vision is obscured as they forge their way along together (the Buddha takes five to operate), hoping they won't trip and collapse on the amphitheater's precarious steps. Still, Burger has so far conceded.