Waves of blue fly over an awestruck crowd. Music rises, while personified raindrops fill the stage, dancing and spinning on stilts. The show has just begun.
The Forest Theatre Chapel Hill, a 200-person open-air theater, had flooded with families, couples, students and friends ready to view a one-and-a-half-hour large-scale puppet show. All handmade, the puppets ranged from masked individuals to 7-foot-tall characters that required three puppeteers to man.
Paperhand Puppet Project took over the Forest Theatre to present their annual show throughout August and September 2025. The show this year, “The Gift,” highlights stories surrounding water, its power and the importance of preservation, told through North Carolina water protectors and activists.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Paperhand Puppet Project’s production. The organization, recently turned nonprofit, officially began when Donovan Zimmerman met co-founder Jan Burger in 1998, starting the process of curating Paperhand Puppet Project into the production it has become today.
Selling out nearly every 2025 show, Zimmerman and Burger have been able to make a living off their passions, which include puppetry and crafting, but go much deeper. For Zimmerman specifically, puppetry is an avenue of activism.
To Zimmerman, activism doesn’t have to be taking to the streets and protesting, fundraising or campaigning. The show's activism primarily revolves around inspiring passion and action in others.
“That's a type of activism, to try to spark people to action, to stand up for rivers, for example, or to do something like Sylvia Earle did when she built a submarine and explored the deep ocean,” Zimmerman said.
For Zimmerman and Paperhand Puppet Project, the destructive power of water is something that hits very close to home. On July 6, Tropical Storm Chantal hit North Carolina, including Saxapahaw, where Paperhand Puppet Project’s studio was located.
“Tropical Storm Chantal was devastating to us," Zimmerman said.
Their original studio was flooded as a result of the storm. Though they were planning to move to a new studio in four months, an early move brought up unexpected costs. In addition to the early move, they lost supplies, materials, music, recordings and some stored puppet parts.
Puppets lost to Tropical Storm Chantal's floods. Any recoverable puppets were dried out and moved to Paperhand Puppet Project's new studio. Photo courtesy of Paperhand Puppet Project.
“It's been a little challenging to feel like we're not just swimming against the current that is life,” Zimmerman said in response to the floods.
Paperhand Puppet Project has been raising money to recover from the damage. Still, despite any damage done by the storm and flood, Zimmerman remains passionate about the beauty of Mother Nature and water.
“Water is just so profound, and it's so dangerous and it's also life-giving. It just has so many layers that we thought was a real potent symbol to put on the stage this year,” Zimmerman said.
Though activism is something that Zimmerman is proud to partake in and promote, protecting the environment isn’t always a form of activism to him, as much as it is an appreciation and privilege. To Zimmerman, conservation is a logical action for anyone.
“It should just be common sense for all people who just wake up with the gift that is this world that provides everything that we need, including water and food,” Zimmerman said. “Because otherwise, we know what it looks like when we just take, take, take only and we don't give back, then things get out of balance and we limit our chances at like, surviving.”
Paperhand Puppet Projects' production, “The Gift,” dives into the balance of water through a wide range of stories.
To open “The Gift,” a 7-foot-tall puppet welcomes the audience, blinking and moving with the help of multiple puppeteers. The formidable old-woman puppet sets high expectations for the audience, as she explains what “The Gift” is.
Throughout the show, the audience was entranced, learning and engaging with the puppets on stage. A song exclaiming “There's a Beaver For That!” brings children and adults to their feet, singing along about the importance of the species.
Audience members look on as a performance about beavers takes place on Sept. 19 in the Forest Theatre. A song played as the puppets informed the audience of the importance of beavers as a keystone species.
Primarily, the show surrounds local activist women and grandmothers whom Zimmerman and Jan met with and interviewed; the women's voices and stories are featured in the show.
One woman who is featured in the show is Elaine Chiosso, former executive director of the Haw River Assembly. The performance highlights Haw River Assembly’s work in both restoration and education. As a yellow school bus is brought onto the stage, Chiosso narrates how elementary students are brought to the river to learn about conservation hands-on.
For two puppeteers, Cosmo Magoo and his older sister, Zella Magoo, the Haw River Assembly’s work connects deeply with their upbringing, as they have both volunteered with the organization since they were younger. Their ties with the Haw River go from being impacted by the Haw River's unsafe drinking water to volunteering with the Haw River Assembly to help educate and clean their waterways.
The Haw River Assembly is a conservation organization that has advocated for the rivers preservation and health since 1982. Though the show seems magical and light-hearted, for the Magoos, their personal experiences have made puppeteering in “The Gift” rewarding, as they continue their activism in environmental awareness.
“The Haw River Assembly, which is a conservation organization, started working on legislation and advocating for the river in the early 2000s,” Zella Magoo said. “I have been working at this thing longer than Paperhand.”
Both Zella and Cosmo began working at Paperhand Puppet Project at age 7—their father having been in the Paperhand Puppet Project band since its beginnings. The Cosmo siblings were both born in Chapel Hill and have lived in Pittsboro their whole lives.
“We're also personally affected by the pollution in the river because we live in Pittsboro, and that water is not safe. Not only is it a big issue that we've cared about our whole lives, but it also affects us still right now,” Zella said.
The pollution that Zella refers to surrounds the Haw River, which is the main water source for Pittsboro, just one hour away from Elon. The Haw River starts in Forsyth County and flows through Guilford, Rockingham, Alamance, and Chatham counties, spanning 110 miles.
The Haw River has had issues with the synthetic industrial solvent, 1,4-dioxane. The Environmental Protection Agency classified 1,4-dioxane as “unreasonable risk of injury to human health,” and likely carcinogenic. The solvent in the Haw River had come from upstream wastewater treatment plants, one specific concern being Greensboro’s wastewater treatment plant.
From 2013 to 2015, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality began monitoring the Haw River and surrounding waterways, finding four hotspots for elevated 1,4-dioxane levels. Since then, Haw River and the Pittsboro community have had issues with the pollution, including a recent spike in the last two years.
Due to the threat the pollutant has posed to Pittsboro’s drinking water, Zella and Cosmo have been lifelong activists around the Haw River. Their other childhood passion of puppetry intersected perfectly with their personal experiences and activism.
“Having a show like ‘The Gift’ happen and getting to be a part of it feels really, really gratifying to be able to bring awareness to something that we've been passionate about since we were children,” Zella said.
For Cosmo, he sees the impact of their puppetry most near the end of the show, when he leads a team of seven puppeteers into the crowd with a large luminescent whale puppet. Cosmo leans in as kids reach the whale, allowing them to touch and be touched by the figure of nature.
“I get to see all their faces as they reach up to catch the whale. And it's just kind of a moment of reverence for them where they just see this beautiful glowing puppet,” Cosmo said.
The connection is seen by more than just the puppeteers. Audience members exit the show discussing the magic and beauty of the puppets. Children stick around to dance on stage and take photos with the puppets, all whilst singing “There's a Beaver for That!”
The Harbaugh family in the audience came to celebrate their daughter, Lili’s, birthday. Father Aaron Harbaugh enjoyed the show and the impact it had on his children.
“It's easy nowadays to abstract away where we get food and water and the whole ecosystem of things. Having, say, beavers come out on stage rather than think of them as, like, a plague on the environment, which is kind of what we treat them as, is a good way for kids to see the impact of animals inside the environment,” Harbaugh said. “They're anthropomorphizing, giving them human characteristics, which is easier for children to identify with.”
Paperhand Puppet Project is set to continue and close out their production of “The Gift” in Asheville from November 7-9, over a year after the devastating floods from Hurricane Helene.