Experienced puppet designer lends her talents to local theater

By Denise Dick | July 13, 2012 at 12:06a.m.

Champion

She measures 4 feet by 6 feet, a hulking green menace perched on the Kent State University at Trumbull Theatre stage, awaiting her next meal.

She’s Audrey II, the carnivorous plant puppet starring in “The Little Shop of Horrors,” the musical comedy that opens tonight at the KSU at Trumbull Theatre. The production is presented by the theater and Summer Stock 35.

Audrey II was constructed by Valerie Kuehn-Engstrom, who has worked as a puppet designer and theater craftswoman for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade since 1979.

Kuehn-Engstrom was asked to build the puppets by Tony Kovacic, the show’s technical director and scenic designer. The two met years ago while working on the Macy’s parade.

When a theater group buys the royalties to perform the show, they get the plans used to construct the Audrey II constructed for the original off-Broadway production.

But Kuehn-Engstrom thought she could develop a puppet that wouldn’t require the puppeteer to contort himself to operate the character.

“That was done by professional puppeteers who were willing to torture themselves,” she said of the original puppet design.

For her design, the puppeteer doesn’t have to support the weight of the puppet.

The plant grows throughout the play so Kuehn-Engstrom constructed two smaller versions of Audrey II.

The first, used at the beginning of the play, sits in a pot, and the second, constructed out of fiberglass, fits over the hand of the lead actor who operates the smaller puppet.

For the larger puppet, Kuehn-Engstrom constructed a steel skeleton and foam sculpted around it and then covered in green material.

It had to be big enough for actors, whose characters are eaten by the plant, to fit inside.

Audrey II’s first victim, Mr. Mushnik, is portrayed by Joe Asente, a Girard High School junior who’s working as an intern on the set.

“It’s a weird experience, but it’s really cool,” Joe said of his character’s fate.

Kuehn-Engstrom grew up near Chicago and met her husband, Tom Engstrom, a Trumbull County native, while both were working on the Macy’s Parade in New York City.

The couple split their time between homes in Mecca Township and Weehawken, N.J.

Though Tom Hitmar, the show’s director, described Kuehn-Engstrom’s Audrey II as “great” and “wonderful,” Kuehn- Engstrom is a perfectionist.

“I’m never pleased with it,” she said. “I always see something that I think I could have done better.”