Celebrating half a century of children's theater
Ding-dong, the witch is very much alive, all greened up and ready to scare Dorothy. Her name is Taz Brower of Chatham Township and she runs the Marionette Players, the theater group that puts on a series of shows every year at the Morris Museum in Morris Township. This year the popular troupe marks its 50th anniversary, and in all that time Brower has never missed a performance.

Fifty years. You definitely get the gold star for attendance. How did you get started down the road to Oz and beyond?
Barbara Keefauver, my good friend and neighbor who eventually headed the Morris Area Arts Council, was the troupe’s mastermind. She had worked with marionettes since she was a teenager. Back in 1958 when we were young moms, Barbara began doing marionette shows as a fundraiser for the Summit YWCA. It sounded like fun so I signed on. Instantly, I was hooked. And the rest (Brower smiles modestly) is theatrical history. Unfortunately Barbara died in 2006 but her husband, Bill, who’s a really good sport and our biggest fan, still has the job of administrative head.

More than half a century of productions, you must have seen lots of changes.
Goodness, yes. We started out as a traditional marionette stage with just the figures activated. Four people worked our first show, Hansel and Gretel. I was both Hansel and the witch. I’m good at witches. Now it takes anywhere from 10 to 15 adults plus four to six children to put on a show. Everything has grown, even the marionettes. Our original figures were 12 to 15 inches high, now they’re about 20 to 22 inches.

Back in the ’60s we started to incorporate human characters, both adults and children, mostly third and fourth graders, interacting with the story. For example, Alice in Wonderland gets larger and smaller as she drinks the magic potion, and she switches around from human to puppet. Pinocchio the puppet talks to Gepetto, a live person. And of course I’m the Wizard of Oz witch. I work both backstage and out front.

We used to move to different venues, but when the Bickford Theatre at the Morris Museum opened in 1970, the museum kindly offered us a permanent home. Now we have a bigger stage with more room for the operators, better lighting, music and sound effects. We have the husbands to thank for their construction skills, plus the museum staff.

Read the entire interview in the new September/October issue of New Jersey Countryside Magazine. Click here to get one free bonus issue and save more than 80% on a subscription.