East Lyme — For the 15-member East Lyme Puppetry Project, puppetry is more than just puppets moving, dancing or singing for the purposes of children’s entertainment.

To them, the artform can be “pure magic” even to adults, or general audiences. Make a marionette come to life and you can transfix a roomful of people. Depict explosions, gunfire or sinking ships through a shadow light box, and the imagination takes hold.

These are just a few of the elements that the East Lyme Puppetry Project put on display in a preliminary showing of its first independent production, “We the People — The Story of David Bushnell, Ezra Lee and America’s First Attack Submarine,” at the East Lyme Community Center on a recent Saturday afternoon.

Moving and gesticulating to pre-recorded sounds of ships, seagulls and explosions, three hand-carved marionettes told an intrigued audience of a few dozen the beginnings of “We the People.”

“Puppetry is always thought of as child’s entertainment. But the reality is that, when done right, it can be very powerful,” said Dan Butterworth, a puppeteer from Rhode Island who has been working with the East Lyme Puppetry Project, or ELPPI, on its production. “It’s obvious right away that a puppet is not a real person but, when it starts to move like a real person, then boom, people are right there with their minds and their bodies. Puppets allow viewers to connect to what they are seeing in a tangible way, one they can viscerally feel through their body. That’s something that will help children remember what they are seeing and learning.”

Founded in 2014 by Richard Waterman, a retired longtime East Lyme elementary teacher, ELPPI was formed with the goal of promoting literacy, both with children and their parents, by way of puppetry.

“Puppetry is really an amazing medium where, if you give a child a sock puppet to play with, their imagination takes over. They have an alter ego to speak with and interact with. It’s something that will get a child talking, imagining on their own,” said Barb Johnson Low, who joined the group shortly after it was formed and serves as its vice president.

To achieve its initial goals of promoting literacy, the group, which consists mostly of retired local teachers, three times a year invites renowned puppetry groups from around the country to inspire local children and their families in East Lyme. Often, those shows are accompanied with a workshop that teaches children simple techniques to make their own puppets at home.

Over the last year, however, ELPPI has formed larger ambitions and now is seeking to develop and tour its first independent production, “We the People.”

That story, as told through a variety of antiquated yet impactful theater techniques, including marionettes, shadow boxes and diagrams, among other visuals, will educate audiences on an important story central to American history — one that took place here in southeastern Connecticut.

America’s first attack submarine, known as the Turtle, was invented circa 1775 by David Bushnell of Saybrook and operated by Ezra Lee of Lyme to potentially aid American rebels in the revolution. Their idea was to use the small submarine to attach a bomb to the hull of a British ship, or several, assuming it would work. Planning and building the vessel was an extraordinary feat for the time, but Bushnell and Lee were unsuccessful in attacking British ships. Despite that failure, their efforts allowed a launching point for submarining technology to develop thereafter, subsequently shaping world history and the region as a result.

“This story, as we are telling it, combines American history, science, Yankee ingenuity and art into one,” Johnson Low said. “But it’s more than that. The driving moral is that even if you fail at something, it can lead to further developments down the line. It’s the idea that working hard, no matter what, eventually pays off.”

Challenges ahead

The inspiration behind the production came from the group’s founder, Waterman, who, even at 92, still is deeply passionate about history. His idea was to simply create a puppet show about the Turtle and its local relevance.

“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” Johnson Low said. “We aren’t a group of professional puppeteers. We are educators. And we know how to educate. We know how to tell a story. So we said, ‘Why not?’”

Now a year into that project, ELPPI has made significant strides in its ambitions. The group has received a total of $5,000 in grants, including a $2,500 Connecticut Humanities Quick Grant — enough to pay for the construction of a marionette stage and three marionettes. Members also created a working script for the show, as well as subsequent opening scenes, which recently were presented in the East Lyme Community Center. Besides that, the group has managed to grab the attention of local teachers and educational organizations.

The eventual goal, Johnson Low said, is to bring "We The People" into schools around the region, and possibly around the state, as well as to libraries and other educational facilities. The show hasn’t yet been streamlined to a particular age group, Johnson Low said, but she believes the production, as it is now, would be most suitable for older elementary and middle school-aged students, “though we want to find a way to make it work for all age groups.”

“It’s been a moving target in many ways,” Johnson Low said. “Not only did we have to create a pre-recorded script for the show, but we’ve had to figure out how to make the show transportable while also teaching our members, who are not trained puppeteers, how to manipulate marionettes.”

That’s where Rhode Island puppeteer Dan Butterworth comes in. He’s dedicated his career to puppetry since the 1970s, when he first fell in love with the art form. Butterworth, who also brings puppetry lessons to schools throughout Connecticut and Rhode Island, inherently understand how puppets, as well as associated theater techniques, can inspire students in unique and memorable ways.

“There are things with puppets that you can’t do with people or actors,” Butterworth said in a recent interview. “You can do fantasy imagery, shadow puppetry, sailing ships and guns shooting off — things you couldn’t possibly do in a typical stage production.”

“There is something about puppetry that strikes us in a way that is archetypical to humanity. It goes back to the days of cavemen,” Butterworth continued. “When done right, puppetry can really ignite something inside us. A great performance done with the body can be very powerful, but a great performance done with an inanimate object is also very powerful.”

After building the three marionettes and the required stage for the ELPPI production, Butterworth has been volunteering his time to teach the group how to properly manipulate a marionette.

“It’s much harder than it looks,” Butterworth said. “It really requires a full body connection with the marionette in order to make it look real. You have to feel, through your hand, how to move a marionette leg like a real leg. The marionette becomes an extension of your body. If you can really feel that, the results can be mesmerizing.”

There are still some hurdles the group must overcome before making this dream into a reality. Members need to iron out and develop the rest of the production, and they also must convince local schools that this story, as well as the medium it’s being told through, fits in with today’s Common Core requirements.

Johnson Low says she feels confident about that, especially considering that the group, which is mostly made up of educators, is thoroughly familiar with such curriculums.

Considering the turnout and obvious interest expressed from those at the preliminary showing at the East Lyme Community Center, Johnson Low feels that ELPPI and “We the People” are headed in the right direction.

"Long story short, we are at the point now where we can do something that's meaningful," Johnson Low said, speaking of the group and its greater goals. "We know how to teach. So let's take our gifts and give them to the community where we can make a difference."

m.biekert@theday.com