Puppeteer whose productions delighted Pittsburgh
Margo Lovelace was a creative virtuoso who captivated young and old alike with her spectacular puppet and marionette shows.
Her whimsical and unforgettable productions in local department stores, theaters and stages for more than 30 years were fondly recalled by anyone who enjoyed them.
“She just opened all new artistic horizons to me,” said one of her apprentices, Peter Sellars, a Pittsburgh native who went on to become a theater director in Los Angeles. “She gave me visual art, theater, and music. She just opened the world.”
Ms. Lovelace died May 7 after a series of health setbacks at the Actors Fund Home in Englewood, N.J., an assisted living center where she resided the past several years. She was 99.
The founder of her own local production company and theater, Ms. Lovelace was a one-woman jack of all trades, designing and constructing her own costumes and figurines and serving as puppeteer, playwright, director and teacher.
Her 100-seat Lovelace Marionette Theater on Ellsworth Avenue in Shadyside was widely recognized in 1964 as the first permanent puppet theater in the country.
“My mother was wildly creative,” said her son David Visser, of Doylestown, Bucks County. “She loved to do anything with her hands — she liked to draw, paint and sculpt. Puppetry was a synthesis of all these different skills and interests, like sewing, designing and performing.”
Ms. Lovelace grew up in Edgewood, and graduated from Edgewood High School in 1939.
As a young woman, she took classes at the Pittsburgh Arts and Crafts Center and volunteered at the Pittsburgh Playhouse.
“It was at the Arts and Crafts Center where she first tried puppeteering,” her son said. “They
suggested she put together a ‘Punch and Judy’ show for a fundraiser.” Her curiosity was piqued. “My mother was fascinated,” Mr. Visser said.
Around the same time, Ms. Lovelace worked in the display department of Kaufmann’s Department Store, Downtown.
“On her lunch hour one day, she walked down to Gimbels and they had a marionette show to entertain shoppers during the holiday season,” her son said. “They told her that they needed someone to take over for a puppeteer who was leaving, so she quit Kaufmann’s and worked with the marionette troupe for the Christmas season. And that was the start of it all.”
At the Puppeteers of America Convention in 1954, Ms. Lovelace met puppetmaster Cedric Head, who operated his Kingsland Marionettes in New York City and Rutland, Vt.
“That summer, she started working with him and made a more serious commitment to making her own puppet theater,” her son said. “She worked for Cedric for about five summers and as an assistant to him at his shows in Lazarus Department Stores in Columbus, Ohio.”
That experience started Ms. Lovelace’s adventure performing at department stores and venues across the country. With grants from local foundations, she also staged shows and clinics at Pittsburgh elementary schools, and taught educators how to make and use puppets in a classroom setting.
Her Ellsworth Avenue space was a colorful feast for the eyes, bedecked with masks, tapestries and lanterns from myriad cultures, recalled Mr. Sellars, who began working as an apprentice at the theater when he was 10 years old.
“She had a garage painted fuchsia with a wall of theater masks from around the world,” said Mr. Sellars, who is a professor in the department of world art and cultures at UCLA. “I knew a friend who had been an apprentice there in the years before and his family was moving to Alabama. I said, ‘Can I take your place?’ I had no idea what I was in for when I knocked on the door. This woman proceeded to change my life and opened new doors to me.”
As he grew older, Mr. Sellars found new experiences and an education that went far beyond puppeteering, thanks to Ms. Lovelace.
“She was pushing forward into the new and the avant-garde, and every year she did a puppet production for adults using texts from the period of great French surrealists,” he said. “The first literature I read was French surrealism. All of those things that I learned, I use all the time — every day. I ended up working in Paris and still do on occasion.
“I went to Moscow when I was 18 because of the stories she told, and that changed my life. I’m still involved in all kinds of Russian theater and that’s all due to Margo Lovelace. That all came from Ellsworth Avenue in the late ’60s and early ’70s.”
“Her house was fabulous,” recalled Mary Zubrow, of Regent Square, a friend who worked with Ms. Lovelace and rented an apartment from her. “I met her because I needed a job when I came back to Pittsburgh 50 years ago. I knew something about puppeteering and she often brought in novices.
“I joined her troupe and traveled with her and the group to a variety of places. We performed together in Ellsworth Avenue and other local places, like the Three Rivers Arts Festival, where we did ‘The Little Prince.’ She was warm and kind and comforting, and always in a creative mode in one way or another.”
In 1966, Ms. Lovelace traveled to Moscow to study with Sergey Vladimirovich Obraztsov, a famed Russian puppeteer.
During a visit to Moscow years later, Ms. Zubrow was astonished to see a museum exhibit by Obraztsov that featured her friend.
When her Lovelace Marionettes show outgrew the space on Ellsworth Avenue in 1977, Ms. Lovelace moved it to a theater in the Carnegie Museum of Art.
When she retired in 1985, she donated much of her collection to the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum.
Since then, Ms. Lovelace helped make several films about her work, including the award-winning “The Puppet Proposition,” which was short-listed for an Oscar nomination and is included in the permanent collection of the New York Library for the Performing Arts.
“She had a remarkable life,” her son said.
Mr. Sellars said he would remember Ms. Lovelace for her lasting contributions to the arts, theater and culture — and for the gifts she gave him.
“My whole life path was opened in those weekends with Margo and her incredible imagination, curiosity and her theater,” he said. “She knew what was good and what was best — and she went there. She’s been with me wherever I go.”
Along with her son, Ms. Lovelace is survived by her son Jan D. Visser, of Charleston, S.C.; two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
She was preceded in death by her daughter Gwendolyn Visser.
A cyber memorial service on Zoom is scheduled for June 11. For further details, email teversalldv@gmail.com.