The woman on stage cradles an infant. She pulls the baby away from her chest and gazes into her child’s eyes. It is a tender moment. Then, the mother lifts her child into the air, digs her face into the child’s belly, shaking it from side to side. The audience laughs at the mother’s playfulness.

The scene is a familiar one. We have all smiled at the sight of a mother tending to her child. In this case, however, a man with strings controls the action. The mother and her baby are marionettes, not real people. And the man holding the strings is Joseph Cashore.

On Monday, December 10, The Cashore Marionettes performed for Middle and Upper School students in Shipley’s Riely Theatre. The cast included Janos Zelinka, the elderly maestro who seemed to shed years as he flawlessly hit every note in a solo piece. There was Old Mike, a homeless man desperately sifting through trash then petitioning the audience, and Cashore, for some change. Meditative Ramul, who also discovers his master in an attempt to free an elusive balloon from a basket.

Joseph Cashore’s marionettes are more than just wood carvings that move using a complex system of strings and clever engineering. Through the motion of their bodies and a soundtrack, we come to know their personalities, their hopes and fears. This is the essence of theater and the art of the puppeteer: to show us the human condition with a few scraps of wood, cloth, and fishing wire, and a great deal of imagination, practice, and skill.

The performance was made possible by Shipley’s Richard Critchlow Brewer Performing Arts Fund, which was established in 2002 by friends and former students in memory of Richard Brewer, Shipley’s beloved theatre teacher and director from 1960 to 1991. The Fund provides support to bring guest artists and performers to Shipley on an annual basis.