{"id":42357,"date":"2015-05-04T01:24:16","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T01:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/owegopennysaver.com\/?p=42357"},"modified":"2015-06-14T01:44:08","modified_gmt":"2015-06-14T01:44:08","slug":"puppeteer-robert-rogers-to-perform-at-this-years-strawberry-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.owegopennysaver.com\/PS\/2015\/05\/04\/puppeteer-robert-rogers-to-perform-at-this-years-strawberry-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Puppeteer Robert Rogers to perform at this year\u2019s Strawberry Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Puppeteer<\/a>

Robert Rogers, a full-time professional puppeteer, poses here with one of his many creations.\u00a0(Provided Photo)<\/p><\/div>\n

Puppeteer Robert Rogers has put on shows in China, Taiwan, Colombia, Tunisia, the Czech Republic, and Canada \u2013 and this summer, he\u2019ll be putting on a show in Owego at the 35th Annual Strawberry Festival at noon on Saturday, June 20 at the Courthouse Square near the gazebo.<\/p>\n

Rogers said that he got into puppetry as a youngster growing up downstate: \u201cI was a kid who really loved puppets. It\u2019s hard to describe why, but some kids love baseball, some kids love music, some kids love NASCAR \u2026 I loved puppets.\u201d He added, \u201cWhen I was growing up it was different because the kind of puppets I would see on TV were puppets from the theater. It wasn\u2019t Muppets and there was no CGI stuff, so I could go to the theaters with my parents and see the same puppets I was seeing on TV.\u201d In a way, it was like Rogers could meet his favorite TV stars.<\/p>\n

Despite his early love of puppetry, it wasn\u2019t immediately apparent that Rogers would make it into a career. Throughout his teenage years, he made puppets and sometimes got paid to perform at birthday parties. However, in college \u2013 at the Tisch School of Fine Arts at New York University \u2013 Rogers majored in film production. He said, \u201cI wanted to be a film director.\u201d Unfortunately, what he wanted to do turned out not to be as fun as it seemed. He said, \u201cOnce I got to film school, I realized I didn\u2019t really like the nuts and bolts of filmmaking. Making a film is very tedious.\u201d He did like the screenwriting part of things, though, so he thought about being a screenwriter. Then, after graduation, he got a job as a puppeteer \u2013 and the rest was history.<\/p>\n

After working for someone else for a little while, he decided to branch out on his own \u2013 a move that has been vastly successful for him. As a full-time puppeteer, Rogers does anywhere from two shows a week to two shows a day. When asked about the range of venues in which he\u2019s performed, Rogers said, \u201cI\u2019ve been in some pretty fancy ones but you know sometimes it\u2019s the out of the way place where you really connect with your audience that makes it kind of memorable. So I could tell you I\u2019ve performed at Lincoln Center, but also I performed in a garage of a firehouse out in Long Island. I\u2019ve been in so many different kinds of places.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although he\u2019s been to shows all over the world, Rogers and his wife \u2013 a SUNY Cortland professor \u2013 now reside in Castle Creek.<\/p>\n

Being a puppeteer doesn\u2019t just involve operating puppets \u2013 it also involves making them. Rogers explained that most of his puppets are made out of latex. He said, \u201cI sculpt them out of modeling clay and then I make a plaster of Paris mold and then when the plaster dries I take the clay out and put the molds together and fill them with a rigid latex. So I\u2019m making casts.\u201d Some of the puppets hang from strings, some are connected to wooden rods, and some Rogers puts his hand in directly. \u201cThere are all sorts of ways to bring them to life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In the decades that Rogers has been in puppetry, he\u2019s made hundreds and hundreds of puppets. Now, he said, \u201cI have a wall full of trunks of puppets that go back 35 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to making his own puppets, Rogers also writes his own material. Some of it is based on classic tales \u2013 like Pinocchio \u2013 <\/i>but some of it is original.<\/p>\n

At Strawberry Fest, Rogers will most likely be doing a marionette show. He said, \u201cI think I\u2019m going to be bringing a show called The Adventures of Orlando Furioso.<\/i>\u201d The character is based on a knight from an Italian epic poem. He said, \u201cI\u2019ve been doing it now for several years and \u2026 it\u2019s a real crowd pleaser because kids like it and adults also.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Puppeteer Robert Rogers has put on shows in China, Taiwan, Colombia, Tunisia, the Czech Republic, and Canada \u2013 and this summer, he\u2019ll be putting on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":42358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stawberry-festival","category-whats-happening"],"yoast_head":"\nPuppeteer Robert Rogers to perform at this year\u2019s Strawberry Festival - Owego Pennysaver Press<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.owegopennysaver.com\/PS\/2015\/05\/04\/puppeteer-robert-rogers-to-perform-at-this-years-strawberry-festival\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Puppeteer Robert Rogers to perform at this year\u2019s Strawberry Festival - 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