From: "Robert Rogers" <robertrogers-AT-robertrogerspuppets.com>
To: <puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org>
Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 21:49:12 -0400
Subject: [Puptcrit] Plays Without People - Rod Young


When I was a kid growing up in Queens, NY, I took a puppetry class at The Museum of the City of New York.  It was taught by (a young) Rod Young.  I thought that he was the most imaginative person, and loved his enthusiasm.  

Years later, when I had grown out of boyhood, I saw him give a performance in a park in New Rochelle, Ny.  It was the summertime and unbelievably hot.  To my amazement, Rod was dressed in black long pants, black shirt and black sports jacket.  He was sweltering.  And I was a little disappointed in his show.

Even more years later, I saw him at a P. of A. festival, and was amazed again - because he remembered me from those museum days..

More and more years later, I had inherited a collection of 1930's marionettes from a puppeteer named Sara Goldsmith.  She had once mentioned that she had given some to Rod Young.  I wrote to him to tell him that she passed away.  To my surprise, he sent me one of the marionettes (he had sold the others), and explained that he was now blind and at the mercy of the Veteran's Administration health care system.

He was another puppeteer with an encyclopedic knowledge of puppetry in his time.

Robert Rogers 
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