It is hard to go from one genre to another, from the world of Poe to the sweetness of his The Shoemaker & the Elves. He had the versatility to do shows for adults and kids. “He was a worker, and he took a lot of projects. Bobby felt doing that freed him up.”īox’s work ethic and range especially impressed Ludwig. It was unusual to see the performers, but it totally worked.
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“What I find most exciting is that he created shows for the Family Series in the traditional lane but when it was time to adapt his own pieces, such as Poe or Anne Frank, he had the puppeteers in costumes onstage, free to move around in front of the audience. (Courtesy of the center)Ītlanta performer/puppeteer Alan Louis became the center’s education director in 2000 and says he was immediately taken by Box’s boldness. Two actors, dressed as Anne in the 1940s, manipulated two sizes of puppets - one for more insular parts of the story, a larger size for dream sequences. Those who saw this production were moved by how he reinvented the form - an emotional tempest in a dollhouse - and took audiences on an altogether unexpected journey.” A scene from “Anne Frank: Within & Without,” an original Bobby Box piece, premiered at the Center for Puppetry Arts in 2006. “Bobby was so incredibly meticulous and sensitive in realizing his vision for this piece, of imbuing his jewel box of a puppet performance with such extraordinary heart. Stephen Michael Brown, president at Cookerly Public Relations, was on the center’s board of directors during Box’s tenure. He told it, and he went all the way to Anne’s demise. People needed it explained, and Bobby made a strong case for what it would be. When the average person thinks of a puppet show, they don’t think of Anne Frank.
“A lot of people had to sign off on that,” Ludwig recalls. Getting permission to stage the show was far from a straightforward process. The piece won Box a prestigious award from the Union Internationale de la Marionnette American chapter (UNIMA). He received a Jim Henson Foundation grant in support of the show, which received national attention, including a preview in The New York Times. His acclaimed Anne Frank: Within & Without, which he wrote and directed for the 2005–06 season, was arguably his signature work. In 2003, he directed The Velveteen Rabbit, performed in Cantonese, at the Ming Ri Theatre in Hong Kong. He directed such productions as Charlotte’s Web and The Shoemaker & the Elves for its Family Series A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Don Quixote, Tales of Edgar Allan Poe and Live Faust, Die Young for its New Directions series and oversaw the center’s Xperimental Puppetry Theater (XPT) program for adult audiences. Husband Graham Kerr is among his survivors.ĭuring a 22-year career, Box directed, wrote and adapted scores of shows, eventually becoming an associate producer at the center.
Bobby Box moved from Atlanta to California in 2010, swapping theater for the antique business.
He didn’t want to leave Piccadilly in a lurch, but he did join Ludwig in Midtown in 1988. Jon Ludwig, now the Center for Puppetry Arts’ artistic director, saw Box in a show in the late 1980s and approached him about working at the center. After a brief time in Ohio for a master’s degree from Bowling Green State University, he moved to Atlanta and began doing theater, eventually becoming an active member of the Piccadilly Puppets Company. Robert Lee “Bobby” Box grew up in Arkansas and attended both Arkansas State University and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where he received degrees in, among other areas, dramatic arts. Box, who spent more than 20 years at Atlanta’s Center for Puppetry Arts, died unexpectedly last week at his home in Woodinville, Washington. It was also his endless enthusiasm, his agreeable nature and his warm embrace of others. It wasn’t just his skill as a puppeteer that won Bobby Box fans and friends all over the world.
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