The puppet whisperer is back.
After puppeteer David Simpich was forced to close his Simpich Showcase, the beloved Old Colorado City shop home to Simpich Marionette Theatre, an art gallery and museum, in late 2021 due to the pandemic, he didn't know if he'd pull a marionette string again.
Years passed until this summer, when he felt a nudge to revisit his past. Simpich will pull out his famous marionettes for five performances of his classic show, "The Puppet Maker: A Story of Christmas." It's the first time he's done the show since the 2019 holiday season, and the first in-person show since before the pandemic. Performances are Sunday through Dec. 27 at Louisa Performing Arts Center at The Colorado Springs School. There is no show on Christmas.
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"It's more like dust being blown off than rust," Simpich said. "Almost five years went quickly, and I spent a lot of time thinking about what would happen. I was sad about not doing it. I thought there was a good chance that it wouldn't happen again. I didn't know whether the rust would settle in, so I'm thankful."
It was difficult, after he closed the shop, to visit the storage unit where about 250 handcrafted marionettes lived.
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"When I wasn't sure if I was going to return to doing this, it was not my favorite place to go," he said. "It seemed like a crypt. But going and finding the show I'm getting ready to do was great fun, to find all the different things and pull it back together and set it up in our garage."
"The Puppet Maker" debuted in 1999 in The Broadmoor Theatre at The Broadmoor, where Simpich had done a marionette version of "A Christmas Carol" through most of the 1990s. He'd dreamed of doing a Nativity show, but couldn't quite figure out a storyline until inspiration hit: He could tell the story of a puppet maker building a Nativity show. It wasn't about him, but it wasn't not not about him. He traveled the show to various venues through the early 2000s before finding a permanent home for the showcase in 2009.
"It's very much true to lots of things about me, but the context, the story of what he's going through to put a show together is fictional," Simpich said. "It tells the whole Nativity story but also the story about a struggling wood carver trying to put together his show."
This won't be the last we see of Simpich and his marionettes. Though he's unclear on what the future looks like, he hopes to do another production in the spring and perhaps tour five to 10 of the 22 marionette shows he's created.
"There is a part of itinerant puppetry that I like -- taking it out into the world and different-sized audiences and places," he said. "On the other side, I love the intimacy of the small theater, too. At this point, we see taking it more out to existing venues again."