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A walk through Boston’s best-kept-secret: the Puppet Free Library

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Katie Delaney

Mar 14, 2023

 

            Walking down narrow Public Alley 437, tucked between Arlington and Berkeley, I set out to uncover a hidden gem right in the heart of Boston. A bit of the way down the street, I spotted my destination - a short and wide door tucked into the wall with a wooden sign that says “THE PUPPET FREE LIBRARY.” Above the door hangs a sign telling visitors to “ring the bell,” so I did, pulling on a string and hearing a distant chime. A minute later, I was greeted by puppeteer Sara Peattie, the keeper of one of Boston’s best-kept secrets.

            I ducked to get through the door and Peattie led me into a tightly packed basement filled from floor to ceiling with puppets, many of which were created by Peattie, completely obscuring the walls. More puppets line the center of the room, creating a narrow path on either side for browsing. Multi-person puppets, puppets on sticks touching the ceiling, and wearable puppets fill the room.

            The crowded space, located in the basement of Emmanuel Church, is what’s known as the Boston Puppet Free Library—and it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s a library where you can check out not books, but puppets. “You sign them out like an old-fashioned library,” Peattie said. And it’s not just any puppets, but towering human-sized puppets of all species, real and fantastical.

            The operation is only open on Tuesdays from 2-7 p.m. when visitors can take a tour or check out a puppet by leaving their name and phone number.

            Peattie said that in the short time the library is open she’ll see around two to five people come in. “It’s just really random,” Peattie said. “It goes in and out of people’s consciousness.” Some people, like those involved in theater and community groups, utilize the library often to check out puppets for events, but for others—like me—it’s more of a mystery they stumble into.

            Peattie gave me a tour of the tightly packed basement, telling me about the different puppets and the history of the library.

            “This is the dragon corner, the bird corner, the fish corner, the other corner,” she told me, pointing around the room. Giant puppets of all different colors and patterns, with streamers and draped cloth crowd the space. Green ghouls taller than me, a tiger split into three pieces, and larger-than-life colorfully painted faces stood out to me.

            The library “sort of drifted into existence,” Peattie said. But it’s been around since sometime in the ‘90s. And I could tell from the sheer number of puppets filling the library that it spans decades of work.

            Most of the puppets are crafted specifically for different community events: parades, pageants, and performances. One of the biggest is Boston’s First Night, where Peattie’s puppets are featured in the parade.

            “We built a few new ones for this year,” Peattie said. “Umbrellas with littles seas inside them, and they added a light, so they were lit up,” Peattie showed me. The umbrellas were a perfect choice since they held up against the rain at this year’s parade.

            After my tour of the library, Peattie led me next door into her workshop, where she spends her time crafting puppets.

            A rainbow of rolls of fabric lines the back wall, and a shelf stands in the middle filled with overflowing boxes of various supplies, with a papier-mache pig head on the top. “Whenever anybody has some material that they don't know what to do with it, they'll bring it around here,” Peattie said.

            Along the wall on the right are the biggest puppets I had seen yet: an eight-foot-tall papier-mache Julius Caesar (I think), a large white face with closed eyes, and a green lizard-looking creature with yellow eyes.

            Peattie told me that those large puppets each took a few weeks to craft. “You know, you have to build the head, papier-mache. Let it dry, paint it. Let the paint dry. Make the costume, build the skeleton, the spine and stuff,” she explained.

            With such a long process for each puppet, I figured that a great deal of patience must be involved in the construction. “Long Victorian audio books from the library,” Peattie said with a laugh.

            Peattie and I sat down on some paint covered chairs, and she told me more about her background in puppet making.

            “I just sort of happened into it. I don’t think I ever formed an idea of what I wanted to do in life ever,” Peattie said. When she was in high school, Peattie was an apprentice to puppet maker Peter Schumann. And now she’s been working with puppets for over 40 years.

            In the ‘80s, Peattie partnered up with George Konnoff, starting the Back Alley Puppet Theater in Boston. They formed the Puppeteers’ Cooperative, the organization that Peattie leads which runs the library today. “My partner George really believed in world domination through puppets. And I was his loyal Lieutenant,” Peattie said.

            As for the Emmanuel Church basement location, no one really knows how the puppets got there. “There were puppeteers here before I was here. Nobody knows who they were,” Peattie said. “It’s like people who've discovered they have an Aardvark living in the cellar, pleased but confused.”

            The church does seem pleased, as they embrace the puppets in their community, featuring them in the church. Puppets were introduced during the pandemic to fill the pews when people couldn’t physically be there, with puppets as congregants.

            Peattie likes to interact with communities like the church in different ways. One of her favorite summer activities, she told me, is going out in the Public Garden with a few small puppets, including a large mouse puppet, and interacting with people. “I mean, it's nice to alternate working on things in a cellar with hanging out with people,” Peattie said.

            When I asked how people usually respond, she said “eh, depends.” She acknowledged that puppets aren’t for everyone. “Some people really like it, some people are kind of alarmed by a giant mouse, yes I can see that.”

            Peattie, though, isn’t discouraged by those who aren’t as interested in puppets as she is. Her love of puppetry runs deep, “because it contains everything,” she said. “You can do design, painting, sculpture, sewing, working in a cellar, teaching hordes of kids, running around outside with braids with everybody yelling, or sitting quietly doing days of papier-mache. It’s always different.”

            As Peattie walked me out of the puppet library, she said “you should sometime borrow a puppet and take a walk around the park, and you’d know more than I can tell you about it.”