Puppets

Ninjas, dinosaurs and dragons will invade Disney Hall this weekend. But not to worry --they're only a few inches high. The venue is hosting its first-ever Toy Theatre Festival, celebrating a form of puppetry that involves two-dimensional puppets attached to rods (as opposed to, say, marionettes, which are three-dimensional and controlled by strings). Toy theater was popular in Victorian England, where drama fans could buy kits with paper puppets that had faces sketched to look like the performers in a popular new play.

The beloved puppet show "Kukla, Fran and Ollie," the creation of puppeteer Burr Tillstrom, had millions of ardent fans, among them Orson Welles, John Steinbeck and James Thurber. The show was also a major influence on future generations of puppeteers, such as Jim Henson. In fact, the Muppets' creator publicly said, "We owe everything to Burr Tillstrom and 'Kukla, Fran and Ollie.' " The classic series is celebrating its 60th anniversary with the release today on DVD of 39 episodes of the show that aired on PBS and in syndication from 1969-71 and the unveiling of a new stamp commemorating the series, which was among the first to appeal to both children and adults.

I've changed cars during the last several years, but not my back seat passenger--a fleecy Lamb Chop puppet in a Santa hat, ruling supreme over various generations of old theater programs, Thomas Guides, plastic water bottles and other essentials of travel.

Susan Simpson carries a theater in her suitcase. Between its frayed tan sides rest the players in her imagination's tragedies and comedies. These actors move through real time and space but can be as abstract as any cartoon. The suitcase cast consists of puppets whose portable performances adapt to any age group or venue. But it's not easy to convince Americans weaned on "Sesame Street" that puppets are more than kid stuff.

Iranian students are to burn an Uncle Sam puppet instead of the U.S. flag in annual rituals Monday to mark the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, a student leader said Saturday. Students said that burning a puppet was less provocative than the flag-burning in previous anniversary rituals and that they were making the switch to stay in line with President Mohammad Khatami's friendly overture to the U.S. in a January television interview.

In an age of high-tech toys, fast-moving video games and slam-bang cartoons, the Bob Baker Marionette Theater quietly sits as a beacon of traditional children's entertainment. But that beacon may soon fall dark, as the theater is nearly half a million dollars in debt and may not survive beyond the Christmas season, say its owners. The theater has produced magical but decidedly low-tech marionette shows in 36 years of operation, making it quite possibly the oldest working puppet theater in the U.

Some might say this town is run by a bunch of puppets. So perhaps it was only fitting for Peter Schumann to stage a social protest by bringing a bunch of puppets to town. No Kermit the Frog and Elmo here; Schumann's puppets are a grotesque lot. They include Uncle Fatso, a huge and distorted Uncle Sam; a gigantic silver-headed, sword-bearing monster that Schumann calls the Great Warrior; a flowing blue figure entitled the Mother Embracer; and a gangly 12-foot-high "Skeleton Horse."

The flashiest cast member in Thea^tre Sans Fil's puppet production of "The Hobbit" is a dragon that's 13 feet tall, stretches 26 feet from his snout to the tip of his tail and has a costume of fiberglass, aluminum, wood and colorfully painted fabric. But an effective dragon needs more than good looks. He's gotta have heart. And that, says Thea^tre Sans Fil founder Andre Viens, is where the humans come in.

Sally Swallow, Corky Coyote and the rest of the Quad Squad put on a show Tuesday for South County educators and community members. The puppet show, sponsored by Solag Disposal and the cities of San Clemente, Dana Point, Laguna Niguel and San Juan Capistrano, was designed to teach students about the value of recycling. The program at Dana Point Youth and Group Facility was a preview for principals who might want to schedule it at their schools. "It was very good," said Judy Shades, head of R.H.