Puppet Youth Troupe

The HOBT Youth Puppetry Troupes established and strengthened long-term relationships with youth in our community to nurture their unique gifts through immersion in the multi-layered artistic process and empathetic practice of bringing puppets to life. Designed and directed by Bart Buch, this puppetry troupe fostered a stable, intimate, and dynamic learning environment to grow artistically and personally with mentorship, freedom of expression, and responsibility for our community. From September–June, youth participants acted as students and apprentices to devise, design, construct, and perform puppet shows collectively.

We commit to establishing long-term relationships with youth in our community that nurture their unique gifts through immersion in the multi-layered artistic process and empathetic practice of bringing puppets to life.

Guiding Principles

• We believe in the transformative power of art to heal and grow individuals, communities, societies, and the world.
• We provide a positive, creative learning environment to encourage confidence, self-esteem, and “finding your voice” through puppetry arts.
• We listen to our youth community and respond to their needs.
• We practice, preach, and provide art that is accessible and inclusive of people of all incomes, ages, races, orientations, abilities, and cultures.
• We honor the deep cultural, spiritual, and ritual roots of puppetry that provide youth with reflections of deep community values, personal meaning and individual identity.
• We excel at providing opportunities for people to create and expand community through the act of making puppet theatre.
• We empower youth to take leadership in telling their innately valuable stories through puppetry and masks.
• We believe youth are capable of professional standards of excellence in puppet theatre and strive to create high quality processes and productions with youth.
• We create opportunities for youth to present their creative work and educate the community about their perspectives.
• We involve youth as decision-makers and leaders.
• We employ puppet theater as a means for youth to examine and express identity and personal perspectives.
• We recognize the folk-arts apprenticeship tradition of learning that puppetry stems from and honor the commitment to train new generations in the craft of puppetry.
• We facilitate the creation of meaningful peer community to reduce isolation of youth from each other and their communities.

We rely on these youth to reflect our world with fresh vision, to carry our organizational mission and community responsibility to the next generation, and hold them vibrantly alive.