Emmanuel Elpenord listens to the audience, with his “Uncle Josue” puppet.
On November 15 & 16, 2025, families and puppetry-lovers filled Puppet Showplace with chatter and laughter, gathered for the world premiere of Jokes with Josue + The Tales of Turtle Boy — created and performed by Haitian-American actor, puppeteer, and voice-over artist Emmanuel Elpenord.
“Looking back on it, it rang all the bells I wanted to ring as far as reaching a Haitian community and planting a seed of what this culture is about outside of the mainstream representations,” shared Emmanuel a week after the premiere.
“Emmanuel’s show marked a meaningful first for Puppet Showplace — the first time we’ve been able to premiere a brand new family show on our Mainstage after supporting it in our Creative Residency for Black Puppeteers,” said Executive Artistic Director Veronica Barron. “It’s inspiring to remember Emmanuel showing his Turtle Boy marionette back in fall of 2023 during the Creative Residency, and then think of the hundreds of audience members who got to see the finished show in fall of 2025.”
A “niche, unique space to build”
Emmanuel posting with his “Uncle Josue” and “Turtle Boy” marionette puppets.
In 2023, Emmanuel was already an incredibly accomplished performer of puppetry — he learned his craft as a puppeteer with the famous Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater in New York’s Central Park, and has toured the world as a puppeteer in high-profile shows like The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Winnie the Pooh.
But he had not yet had the chance to build a marionette of his own and develop a story around it. So he set out to do just that.
Emmanuel was accepted into Puppet Showplace’s Creative Residency for Black Puppeteers in 2023. With the support of his Creative Residency cohort — four other puppeteers from all over the U.S., along with the 2023 Residency leadership team, Neprii Amenii, Tanya Nixon-Silberg, and Sarah Nolen — Emmanuel workshopped story ideas for Jokes with Josue, and built and tested the Turtle Boy marionette puppet, which was later costumed by Arlee Chadwick.
“[The Creative Residency for Black Puppeteers] gave me a very niche, unique space to build,” Emmanuel shared with The Bay State Banner. “Puppetry is a white field primarily…and [the Residency] took the designing and devising that was happening in other circles, but it was specifically for puppeteers and people of color to have that space.”
During this time, Emmanuel also participated in the Haiti Cultural Exchange’s Lakou Nou residency program and received a Jim Henson Foundation Family Grant for the project.
Barron, along with Puppet Showplace’s Artistic Associate, Ash Winkfield, continued to follow up with Emmanuel about the project until the show was ready to become the 21st show to premiere through Puppet Showplace’s Incubator for New Works, supported by Barron, Winkfield, and Incubator Project Advisor Bonnie Duncan of The Gottabees.
Cultivating Community
Emmanuel and “Uncle Josue” beckon to the audience.
“Our programming intent is simple — we want every child and grown-up to be able to see themselves represented on stage in some way, and we also want everyone to have a window into empathizing with someone who is different from them. We use a “windows and mirrors” approach to representation on stage,” said Barron, referencing Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop’s popular framework for children’s literature and storytelling — essentially that every child should be able to see something on stage that holds a mirror up to them — their identity, their experience, the language they speak at home, the way their grandpa talks — and every child should also have the opportunity to see a window into someone else’s experience, which invites them to empathize.
Dancers from KS Studios performed on November 16 between puppet shows.
Boston has the third-largest Haitian community in the U.S., and Puppet Showplace wanted to celebrate Haitian culture in multiple ways throughout the premiere weekend. After each show, staff handed out dried mango slices, played Haitian music, and offered a puppet craft, as well as a word search in Creole.
Puppet Showplace also worked with the Toussaint L’Ouverture Cultural Center, a long-awaited home for Haitian heritage and culture in Boston, which just opened May 20, 2025, to bring a Haitian folkloric dance performance by six young dancers from KS Studios.
“Haitian Folklore is a traditional dance form that remains largely unknown to the wider world. A core part of KS Dance Studio’s mission is to share this cultural heritage,” said Karm-Syndia Augustin, the founder of KS Dance Studio. “We are deeply grateful to Puppet Showplace Theater for providing the opportunity and space to present a Haitian Folklore performance in Brookline. This experience not only introduced new audiences to Haitian culture, but also allowed us to connect with Haitian-Americans in attendance who were excited to reconnect with their roots.”
Uncle Josue walks the aisle.
The dancers donned colorful attire while dancing to "A.K.I.K.O.," by Haitian singer Emeline Michel. Even “Uncle Josue” was seen tapping his feet while waiting for the dance to begin!
“We were excited to connect with the local Haitian community with this show. Mattahunt Elementary School, a bilingual English-Haitian Creole school in the Boston Public Schools, came for a field trip during the week, which led to Emmanuel ‘getting group-hugged by twenty Haitian kids,’ as he later shared,” reflects Barron.
From Two Places
At the top of the show, Emmanuel sets the stage: he’s from New York, because he was born there, but also from Haiti, because that’s where his parents are from. He tells the audience how much he misses Haiti:
“It’s a good thing that my Uncle Josue is coming to visit! But his riddles are very tricky. Will you help me solve them?” Elpenord asks the audience.
“Uncle Josue” appears — a gorgeous hand-carved wooden marionette, who was built by Kevin White and costumed by Taylor J. Harrison. Elpenord’s skill as a puppeteer is evident in the puppet’s subtle and dynamic movements.
“Tim tim?” Uncle Josue asked the audience in Haitian Creole, to check if they are listening — similar to “knock knock” in English.
“Bwa chèch!” the audience replies, just as Elpenord has taught them to do, indicating they are ready for a riddle.
“[My husband] knows Creole and laughed at so many parts that reminded him of his own relatives there,” shared Kareen from Dorchester after the show. “Emmanuel made jokes that were at kid level, and also just over their heads for adults.”
Turtle Boy shows off his airborne maneuvers.
As Uncle Josue leaves to take a nap, he tells Emmanuel to “tell that story you made up; I like that story!” and Emmanuel finds himself on stage alone. He reminisces about how much he loved reading comic books about action heroes as a kid, before segueing into his own action story — a choose-your-own-adventure about Turtle Boy, the marionette he built in the Creative Residency.
“These folktales, which I think of as fairytales, in a way, touch on deeper things for kids,” said Elpenord in The Bay State Banner. “The piece pulls a lot on the audience’s imagination.”
“A lot of us can relate to a story about being from two places — especially in a place like Greater Boston, where a third of households speak a language other than English at home, and a third of households have recent immigration in their family story.” shared Barron after the premiere weekend. “Emmanuel’s show pulls at something that many of us feel — the desire to celebrate folk stories and jokes and wisdom from our elders, and at the same time, the desire to create new stories that speak to our lives today.
The impact of the show and the celebration of Haitian culture can perhaps be summarized in no better way than this reflection from audience member Nyell from Mattapan:
“It made me very nostalgic and happy as an adult — it was great for my inner child. It also was so beautiful to see the light in my daughter's eyes as she watched our culture represented in such a beautiful way.”
Follow the Artist
Follow Emmanuel Elpenord on Instagram at @sword.of.elpenord to receive updates about his work!
