KC ORIGINALS words by ANNE KNIGGENDORF
What If Puppets? “Cirque du Wiener Dog” doesn’t quite roll off the tongue like “Cirque du Soleil,” but the dog show itself still enchants audiences. Kansas City’s What If Puppets knows how to wow a crowd. Think you haven’t heard of What If Puppets? You have. But it’s still better known by its founding name: Paul Mesner Puppet Theater. The organization adopted the new name in Summer 2022 while keeping its mission – and aesthetic – pretty much intact, zany wiener dog antics and all. The continuity was largely due to who took the torch from Mesner when he retired in 2016 after 39 years putting Kansas City on the national puppet map. Mike Horner, creator of the wiener dog circus, had been the lead puppeteer with the company since 2006. Horner says, “I became artistic director, but we didn’t have an executive director. And I know how to make puppets and put on puppet shows, but I don’t know how to run a business.” He says he and education director Alex Espy did a little “muddling through,” though business stayed strong. In December 2019, Meghann Henry came on board as the executive artistic director, just in time for the pandemic. Henry’s area of expertise is theater for young audiences. She spent years at the Coterie Theatre, bringing the arts to the NorthEast Branch of the Kansas City Public Library as a youth services librarian and building a social-emotional learning theater program in Denver called Mirror Image Arts. “I learned about the needs here for Mesner Puppet Theater and was like, you know, that sounds like a really cool next challenge,” Henry says. And it was lucky that she had the background she did in light of the upheaval their core audience faced shortly after she took the position. COVID-19 robbed children of the stability of daily in-person interactions with teachers and peers and predictable schedules. So, the What If team asked educators, librarians, and youth social workers to help determine what would benefit young audiences in the current climate. According to the website, what they found was a “need for learning through play and arts integration strategies to support the social-emotional development of 0-8 year olds coupled with a call for innovative ways for the very young and their parents to access professional arts as a form of family engagement.”
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