For theater, time's come to go Mum

When Martina Plag quit her architecture job to build puppets for the Mum Puppettheatre, she didn't expect to stand onstage four years later, helping to sell the theater's remaining puppets and props.

Yet that was her bittersweet assignment yesterday, as the red-brick facility on Arch Street got rid of props, supplies, and its signature handcrafted puppets left over from 23 years of theater.

Popular items included a variety of pig props - from hand puppets to shadow puppets to gloves with pig-topped fingertips - from the Mum's final production, Animal Farm, which closed last month.

Plag was inspired to work at the Mum after seeing its production of The Visit - a performance that reminded her of the puppetry she'd known growing up in Germany.

"I was so motivated by it that I decided creatively this is where I need to be," said Plag, who came to the city to attend Temple University. "It shattered all those preconceived notions of puppetry, where the puppet is separated from the performer."

Plag was one of a number of volunteers whose tulip-topped headbands - costumes from The Wizard of Oz - marked them as people who could answer questions yesterday about the puppets, posters and props used in the theater's productions.

On tables by the theater's ground-level stage lay mohair rabbits from The Velveteen Rabbit, a Japanese bunraku puppet used in The Visit, puppet concentration-camp prisoners from The Puppetmaster of Lodz, and prop liquor bottles from Animal Farm.

The red brick walls were nearly bare, with most of the white plaster casts of actors' faces purchased or resting on the theater's empty upholstered seats.

By the front entrance, postcards advertising the canceled June run of The Adventures of a Boy and His Dog in ye Olde Philadelphia, written by Mum's founder, Robert Smythe, were going for 25 cents.

Smythe manned the cash register throughout the day, talking with former colleagues, friends and theater-goers, and trying to convince many that the city's cultural landscape would continue to support puppet productions at many other venues.

Mum productions could not get newspaper reviews when they began 23 years ago, he said, but have since won numerous Barrymore Awards from the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia.

"We competed and held our own with all the biggest theaters in Philadelphia," Smythe said.

Smythe's 12-year-old son, Harry, wandered through the crowd with his own flower-topped headband, reminding actors of plot twists in productions from six years ago. One of Harry's favorite memories of the theater, he said, was constructing a catwalk for a production of The Fantasticks with his father.

Former actors and spectators said Mum productions stood out for their high quality and broad appeal.

Brett Mapp, an avid theatergoer who attends one production a week, said one of his top 10 theater moments occurred a few years ago during a Mum performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

In the midst of the performance, the theater's electricity went out, but the cast and crew continued seamlessly by candlelight.

"It was such a smooth transition half of the audience didn't realize," Mapp said. "It was just incredible."

The integration of performers, puppets, musical scores and narration helped bring serious themes to children and adults alike, said frequent Mum viewers Steven and Lisa Sav, who enjoyed bringing their son to performances.

"There are all the video games and movies and tech stuff," Lisa Sav said. "This is just down to earth. It's too bad. I don't know if there's anything else like that."

The Savs took home three puppets - one attired in a peasant dress, two others in old-fashioned suits - to display at home.

The work done at Mum benefited the city's wider theater scene as performers went on to other companies, Mapp and Plag said.

"I would bet there isn't a single theater in this town that doesn't have someone who passed through Mum," Plag said.