“Before I moved away from Baltimore, I didn’t realize that other cities do not have their own enchanted rowhouses of puppetry,” joked musician Eric Voboril in a short documentary about Hollins Street’s Black Cherry Puppet Theater that came out several years ago.

Michael Lamason, Black Cherry’s 68-year-old executive director, had never attended a puppet show—much less performed with a marionette—when he founded the original troupe with Corliss Cavalieri, Bill Haas, Rick Weiss, and Michael Richardson in the summer of 1980. They were just college kids at MICA and needed jobs and got creative.

Hired by legendary recreation and parks director Virginia Baker, who had been appointed by Mayor William Donald Schaefer to direct a special office he named Adventures in Fun (can we bring that back?), the motley collection of printmakers and painters put on 107 shows for city kids over school break that year.

Decades before YouTube, they taught themselves how to build sets, props, and puppets from Pratt library books, earning $6 an hour for their troubles.

“A small fortune in those days,” Lamason says with a smile in the theater’s Geppetto-like workshop as he stands and manipulates the knees, elbows, and face of a Jack and the Beanstalk marionette he’s been working on. “We were up all night before our first performance, still making everything we needed. No rehearsal, I just went and did the show. I thought it was a mess, but you dance a marionette in front of an audience and nobody has a clue how you’re doing it. They just see you doing this magic on the stage and there’s a suspension of disbelief. They’re transfixed.”

Far from mere child’s play, the ancient Greeks interpreted the Iliad and the Odyssey with puppets. In the Middle Ages, string puppets were used to depict biblical stories, with the Virgin Mary often a central figure (marionette in French means “little Mary”). And in the 18th century, leading composers like Haydn created adult operas specifically for marionettes.

Now in its 45th year, the nonprofit Black Cherry theater has presented thousands of shows and workshops at schools and festivals throughout the city, state, and region. Housed across the street from historic Hollins Market in side-by-side rowhomes, purchased for a grand total of $12,000 in the mid-1990s when crack cocaine was tearing at the fabric of its Sowebo neighborhood, Black Cherry’s central mission—and Lamason’s, too—remains performance.

Its quarterly Puppet Slamwich series for adults features tales and marionettes; ventriloquist dolls; and finger, hand, sock, stick, and shadow puppets of every imaginable variety. The 50-seat black box theater also hosts a variety of musical guests throughout the year, from folk to jazz and classical performers.

The puppet slams, which attract a mix of artist applicants from near and far, always include a musical guest as well, selling out within days of their ticket release. At a recent Slamwich, for example, the first performer was Matt Muirhead, an artist better known for his sci-fi Baltimore landscapes. He used a sock monkey named “Holly” to help tell a nonlinear narrative against a scrolling backdrop that included several of his paintings.

Muirhead was followed by Carmen Houston-Ludlam, a 27-year-old woman from southern Anne Arundel County with Down syndrome, who performed a ventriloquist act with a mermaid, cracking up the crowd with her hand puppet’s irreverent jokes about its shoe fetish and waterbed.

Lindsey Ball, an artist and past National Puppetry Festival coordinator from Chicago, used a toy-sized theater, a crankie, shadow puppets, and recorded voice-over to share a moving personal story that also honored the struggles of those in the LGBTQ+ community who came before her.

“I’ve always wanted to come to Baltimore and be a part of a Black Cherry show,” Ball said later. “The city’s support here for such a labor of love is amazing.”

After intermission and a musical interlude from a banjo, fiddle, and guitar combo, Houston Ludlam, still in the sparkling black dress that she performed in, slid into a folding chair with some popcorn to watch the rest of the show alongside her parents. Seated next to her in the back row, an audience member quietly congratulated her on her flawless performance as the second half began.

“I’ve been practicing for three years, but only in front of my friends and family,” she whispered back, beaming. “This was my first time on stage. My knees were nervous when I started. But only my knees.”

Although the Black Cherry Puppet Theater is known around town for its eye-popping performances and award-winning school residencies, the puppetry group was never meant to be more than a summer job for five students from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).

“I don’t think we had a vision beyond making a puppet show that we could tour to recreation centers during the summer and make money,” says Michael Lamason, the nonprofit’s executive director.

He had never seen a puppet show when he founded the group in 1980 with Bill Haas, Rick Weiss, Corliss Cavalieri, and Michael Richardson. But by the end of that first summer, Black Cherry had put on 107 shows.

For the next decade and a half, the group performed puppet shows and hosted workshops at after-school programs and recreation centers around the region before putting down roots in Hollins Market in the late 1990s. The unfinished space, which sports a series of psychedelic splashings, as well as a mural by visual artist Espi Frazier, has worn many hats during its decades on Hollins Street, including a puppet theater, a live music venue, and, most importantly, a springboard for young talent.

Black Cherry affiliated artists Jennifer Strunge and Valeska Populoh were students at MICA when they joined the theater, and now Strunge runs the after-school workshops. Populoh, who now teaches in MICA’s Fiber Department, co-founded the theater’s fast-selling Puppet Slamwich series.

“Many of us have cut our teeth on puppetry in that space,” Populoh says.“A lot of people have given their free labor and time to Black Cherry because it’s been such an important resource for us.” Strunge agrees, calling the theater, “a place for connoisseurs of cardboard and lovers of scrappy inventions to support each other.”

Lamason hopes that sentiment will continue for years to come. For now, the theater continues to perform virtually until stay-at-home orders are lifted. But planned renovations slated for later this year include adding a new bathroom, ticketing area, and upstairs studio to give the next generation of puppet masters an improved performance space to last the next 40 years.

Now 62 years old, Lamason says he won’t be putting away his puppets anytime soon.

In its third year, Light City has expanded to cover three weekends: Neighborhood Lights from April 6-8, Light City art and music festival from April 14-21, and Labs@LightCity from April 18-21. Expect to see 21 illuminated art installations along the Inner Harbor, more than 50 performances, dozens of speakers at panel discussions at Labs@LightCity, fireworks, and a whole lot of light bulbs.

Opening Night Parade

The kickoff to the main festival comes by way of parade. Community groups, school marching bands, stilt-walkers, and arts groups will take to the streets in a celebratory walk that starts at 7:30 p.m. April 14. You can stop by 621 E. Pratt St. at noon that day for a workshop to make artwork for the parade, then take part in it. After all, this is about celebrating our city and the people and art who make it light up.

Grand Master Flash and G. Love

Headlining music acts are always a draw, and this year is no exception. Headlining music acts: Grand Master Flash will perform at 10 p.m. April 14, G. Love & Special Sauce at 10:30 p.m. April 20, and Kimbra at 10:30 p.m. April 21 on the Light Up the Night! Concert Stage at the Inner Harbor Amphitheater. For a complete list of musical acts, see https://lightcity.org.

A New Stage

A second Club Light City stage, presented by Morgan State University, has been added to the event in 2018 to showcase local, national, and international DJs playing house, dance, and hip-hop in Kaufman Pavilion by Rash Field.

Audio Tour

New this year, you can grab your phone, dial 410-934-7821, enter the number of your Art Walk stop, and listen in* for a self-guided audio tour of the art installations—both at the BGE Light Art Walk and Neighborhood Lights. Learn about the stories behind these wondrous pieces. (*Works best on speaker phone and shared with friends.) 

Illuminated Crankies

Crankies have gained widespread appeal throughout the city, perhaps in part to performances at Black Cherry Puppet Theater and the popular Crankie Fest at the Creative Alliance. Lantern Studios will roll a cart through the festival that will bring shadow puppet crankies shows to the streets. As the story scroll is lit from behind to reveal silhouetted characters and settings, crankies are a perfect addition to a festival of lights.

Drone Prix

A drone race—the only of its kind in the world—will bring league competitors from across the country to the festival’s light installation/sculpture garden/obstacle course, created by Baltimore-based artist collaborative McCormack and Figg. During any race downtime, you can wander through the installation to see it up close.

Labs@LightCity

Billed as an “ecosystem of ideas,” Labs@LightCity brings together leading thinkers for conversations focusing on education, the environment, the arts, social issues, health, the makers movement, and food. Registration is required, but tickets are “pay what you can.” There are so many speakers to get excited about, it’s hard to choose—arts activist Aaron Maybin, Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. of the Hip Hop Caucus, beloved artist Joyce Scott, radio host Marion Winik, to name a few.

Fireflies Pedicabs

Whether you ride on one of artist Cai Guo-Qiang’s Fireflies, or watch them go by, these whimsical pedicabs will be a sight to behold. The artist designed 27 illuminated kinetic sculptures that will be attached to pedicabs, for a more festive way to travel during the event.

Neighborhood Lights

This artist-in-residence program pairs local visual artists with community organizers in 14 Baltimore neighborhoods. For a full weekend, you can see site-specific art installations made specifically with each neighborhood personality in mind. Take photos because they won’t last long. That’s part of their beauty.

“The Eighth Art”

Much like Labs@LightCity, it’s impossible to pick just one art installation at the Inner Harbor when each of the 21 pieces will be mind blowing. For instance, “The Eighth Art,” by Erinn E. Hagerty and Adam P. Savje of Unfolding of the Wave Ltd., is a 24-foot geodesic dome that you can actually get inside of, to watch the light displays around you.