Baum Bugle EXTRA! Read more about it

Oz puppet show in Israel

Wizard of Oz puppetry turned out to be a topic big enough for its own book. (And if you want to write it, you can have my notes.) Tackling it for The Baum Bugle I quickly discovered the topic was larger than my vision for the article, which was limited to performing puppet shows for children here in the US. As I focused on a dozen or so of the more memorable shows, I quickly realized there were just as many intriguing Oz puppet shows overseas.

I also can include some information about the use of puppetry on stage and screen in Part 2, although I dare not carry that conversation too far; technology has taken that far over my head.

And have you seen the Muppets wiki entry for The Wizard of Oz?  The feature would double! We’d be serving up puppet features for two years!

Soooooo much about the Muppets! This “Extras” will get you started. Follow embedded links to more.

Following the necessary but painful direction of our editor to cut cut cut cut this topic down to Bugle-sized bites, we hit on an idea I have long toyed with. Why not overflow some of that “extra” material onto the Club’s website? So I did.

Fred Stone’s congratulatory telegram to this puppet company was reprinted on the program cover.

Now in addition to puppet content in the Spring and Autumn Bugle, you’ll find “extra” Oz puppetry online such as International puppet shows, a few pages of Muppet material, and a request for your help building a photo gallery of mass-produced Oz puppets. Sort of a visual checklist we can do online that would have filled too many pages in the Bugle.

I’m currently working to gather up a scrapbook of ephemera that we didn’t include, too, but that Extra’s not quite ready to share — just like so many words and so many pages, there are so many clippings, photos, programs and pictures to sort through.

Moving forward, we hope to see other contributors to the Bugle take advantage of our website to provide extra material beyond what Bugle pages can hold. The opportunity to embed links was particularly helpful with this puppetry content. I hope you’ll follow them, and have a look at some of the fantastic Wizard of Oz puppet shows I uncovered while researching the articles.

Look for Bugle Extras posted as pdfs on the Baum Bugle page here at OzClub.org.