I like that you can build a whole world and invite people into it. After shows, I’ll see kids that talk about their own puppet shows that they’re going to do. It stimulates kids’ creativity.”

Monica Leo

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Imagine heading to the polls this September and finding that there are two candidates for Leader of the Beasts: Terry Turtle and Benny Beaver. Mr. Beaver is all about progress: he wants to level the forest and build the world’s tallest beaver dam. And Mr. Turtle is the environmental candidate; he’s all about maintaining the forests and wetlands as they are.

Which candidate will get your vote?

The stakes are a little different in the world of Eulenspiegel Puppet Theatre, which will bring its “Big Election” puppet show to the Kalona Fall Festival this year. Performances will be at 3 p.m. Friday and 11 a.m. Saturday.

“The kids get ballots when they come in. They get a little packet that has a ballot and a pencil, and some voting information that they can pass on to their parents if they want to,” Monica Leo, managing director and lead puppeteer, says. “And they get a little cardstock paper puppet that they can cut out and put together of Madame Owl.”

Leo and puppeteer Stephanie Vallez take on the roles of a whole cast of animal characters, including the reporter, Madame Owl. Kids not only leave with their own finger puppet, but also a coloring sheet by Iowa City artist Claudia McGehee.

Leo and Vallez cowrote “Big Election” several years ago, inspired by a West Liberty League of United Latin American Citizens meeting in which someone suggested a puppet show as a way to help new citizens understand their voting rights. They’ve since performed it over 90 times, collecting the votes of just under 7,000 kids.

“We have all the ballots in the basement if anyone ever needs a recount,” Vallez says, noting that there is a clear leader, but also “a certain undecided amount.”

Those ambiguous ballots? “Usually the toddlers,” she says.

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Eulenspiegel Puppet Theatre got its start “a zillion years ago” (1974) when Leo put her artistic skills to use making puppets and selling them at Renaissance fairs. Her large puppets didn’t sell well, “So the logical conclusion was just to perform with them if nobody was going to buy them anyway,” she says.

Through the Iowa Arts Council's Artists-in-Schools program, a partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, Leo and late co-puppeteer Teri Jean Breitbach traveled to schools throughout the state, giving students creative experiences through puppetry one week at a time.

“We did that for twenty years,” Leo says. “The busiest year I think we ever did was in 1989; we had 23 five-day residencies that year, plus just a lot of individual shows, too. You do that many times, you’re going to get professional at it.”

Although puppet life is a little different today, serving schools is still an important element for the West Liberty-based troupe that calls Owl Glass Puppetry Center home. Leo and her team provide their own version of “edutainment” for students at West Liberty schools, as well as summer library programs and other events.

But puppet shows aren’t just for education, nor are they exclusively for children.

“I think escapism is always its own justification,” Vallez says, and she points to the great need for exactly that during the pandemic, when the theatre did a drive-in show where families could pull up in their vehicle and watch a live performance. “People were really starving for that. That was very clear to me.”

Inside the puppetry center, puppets and props are piling up in preparation for a new show exploring the 170-year history of the West Liberty Fair (now Muscatine County Fair). They’re crafted from a variety of materials and techniques: papier mache, painting, sewing, knitting, and needle felting. And that’s just one part of a puppet show; playwriting, set design and construction, and music are others.

“I like that you can build a whole world and invite people into it,” Leo says. “After shows, I’ll see kids that talk about their own puppet shows that they’re going to do. It stimulates kids’ creativity.”

Puppets are unique; they can “say things that nobody else can,” Vallez says. “Puppets can say serious things in hilarious ways, and puppets can put people off their guard so they’re willing to receive information and maybe even learn something or change their mind a little bit.”

The harmless puppets’ ability to disarm is a superpower when it comes to adult themes. The Holocaust, for example, is not a light subject, but through puppetry, it can be easier to digest.

“My dad was in a concentration camp in Germany before he came here, and I do a show based on that where I take the text from the memoirs he wrote about his time in the concentration camp,” Leo says. “You can do very adult things.”

Looking ahead, Leo and Vallez are optimistic about the future of puppetry. They’ve just hosted the Great Plains Puppet Train, a four-day puppet festival that brought puppeteers from across the region together for shows and workshops. They’ve already toured 31 states and four countries, and they’ll add Alaska in October. And they see potential in puppets inhabiting digital spaces even as live performances remain AI-proof.

And at Kalona Fall Festival, they’ll have another opportunity to attract people to puppetry and consider how they might participate themselves.

“To me, that’s a lot of what it’s about,” Leo says. “I want to retire someday and get the next generation of puppeteers interested.”

“Big Election” will be performed at Kalona Fall Festival at 3 p.m. Friday and 11 a.m. Saturday. For more information about Eulenspiegel Puppet Theatre, visit owlglass.org.