In the late evening, the hallways of ShoppingTown Mall stretch long and mostly unpopulated. But if you cast a stray glance at the white doors of the Open Hand Theater, the vivid life inside will draw you in.

Giant faces of puppets sit still on top of the closets and immediately catch a gaze. Their eyes stare out from faces both wrinkly and young, and snouts and trunks poke out of puppet animals. Marionettes lay in one corner and taffeta and cloth spill out of another. A fold-out puppet theater hints at where the faces come to life.

The theater moved to ShoppingTown in April and will celebrate its new home with a grand reopening Thursday. The reopening will be two hours of the theater’s best efforts.

Open Hand is the only puppet theater in Syracuse, said Andrea Wandersee, the theater’s managing director. The theater has been around for almost 38 years, starting out in the Westcott neighborhood and then finding a home in The Castle on Salina Street for 17 years, said Peter Fekete, the artistic director.

“It’s special because we create a safe space for children to experiment not only with art and theater, but also working as a group, with connecting with another, with their own personal growth and development,” Wandersee said. “That’s why we’ve been such a success over the years.”

Peter Fekete (left) and Andrea Wandersee (right), Open Hand Theater’s directors, will host its grand re-opening on Thursday. Hieu Nguyen | Staff Photographer

At the reopening event, children working the puppets will lead a parade, bringing guests into the new Black Box Theater. Donations to the theater and a silent auction will be held. The evening will also feature a small performance of “Where the Wild Things Are” and an icebreaker game for the guests.“We want to make sure the public knows we’re still here, and we’re here for the community and anybody that would like to work with us,” Fekete said.

Old Theater prides itself on the accessible space that looks to fuel creativity. Some parents of children in the program, like Susan Keeter, a Syracuse local, look forward to enrolling their children even before they are old enough.

Keeter’s daughters, now 20 and 14, both work with Open Hand Theater. Keeter has fond memories of their milestones at the theater: the first time her older daughter, Sara, got asked to participate in the parade, the first time they tried stilting and when her younger daughter, Emma, started working with children on the autism spectrum who are in the program.

“It’s a complete creative immersion,” Keeter said. “From a very early age, kids start writing their own scripts. They’re doing visual arts and sculptures of making sets, puppets and masks. They go into comedy, writing their jokes. They often perform plays they’ve written collaboratively.”

Apart from working with children in the space itself, Open Hand has also worked with Syracuse City Ballet, the orchestra, opera and nonprofits. The theater’s regular programs include Hand in Hand for kids who write their own scripts and make their props and costumes, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” in December and “Little Shop of Horrors” in the spring.

Many parents were once kids in the program, and the theater is excited to see generations return. Children who come to the program almost always come back, Fekete said.

Hieu Nguyen | Staff Photographer

“Sometimes kids are not as social, but one thing I know with Open Hand, as soon as they’re here, they’re pretty social butterflies,” he said. “They get to really view the person they are, and they can feel comfortable with who they are. That’s one thing we love in Open Hand — you can be yourself.”

Fekete added that many theaters start with a script that kids work with, rather than writing it themselves. Working from the ground up, guiding the kids through the process and watching them create something fresh and original is what Open Theater strives to do — all while having fun.

“That’s what it comes down to, that energy, that love, that passion which all artists are passionate about in their unique way,” Fekete said. “That’s really what sets the tone for us.”

Fekete is an old hand at the theater, where he started off from the time he was 8 or 9 years old until the age of 17. He returned to Open Hand every year through its Circus Camp program and graduated to the position of assistant for three years. When previous artistic director Geoffrey Navias retired, Fekete got a call, an interview and eventually the job in 2015.

“We loved the Castle,” he said about the old location. “(But) as much as I loved the Castle, there’s things we couldn’t do as an organization moving forward. It wasn’t accessible to people who had more needs than a walk-in.”

Since the Castle is under the historical society, making the alterations envisioned proved difficult, and the theater had fewer seats than it does in its new location.

Andy Mendes | Digital Design Editor

The space in ShoppingTown was previously occupied by a Hollister branch, but now the former cash counter holds a depot of paints and swaths of paper and paper towel in an art room. Paint splatters and dozens of art manuals decorate the benches, shelves and the patterned floor. The kids at Open Hand Theater had been at work.

Spotlights throw out jets of yellow light all over the space. The art room is where the magic of Open Hand Theater comes to life. Children and adults in the program create large puppets with their own hands, write scripts for plays, bring fairytales to life by building their own sets and add the finishing touch with a spot of acting.

The theater is now all on the same floor and there is a lot of parking available. The space works for what the theater needs now, Fekete said.

“We love the space so much, and it’s so us,” he said.

Published on September 25, 2017 at 11:49 pm

Contact: dmurthy@syr.edu