What if they connected: New leader wants to use puppets to give toddlers their first arts experience

Amanda Kibler has long admired What If Puppets, the nonprofit’s new executive director shared.

“It’s a great company,” she said of the Kansas City arts institution known for years as the Mesner Puppet Theater. “I’m just over the moon to be involved. I’ve been saying for a long time, it’s the one company in town that I would have been excited to leave The Coterie (Theater) for.” 

Amanda Kibler, What if Puppets

Kibler previously served as education director at The Coterie in Kansas City for more than a decade.

What if Puppets was created in 1987 by internationally recognized puppeteer Paul Mesner.

During the 2022-2023 school year, the organization’s troupe of master puppeteers, storytellers, and educators performed 340 days out of the year, including performances in theaters across the country and in 218 Kansas City classrooms for an audience of more than 18,000 young people, according to What If Puppets. The production team built 54 custom puppets for its shows, local theaters, and partners during the same period.

As someone with a theater education background, Kibler said, she likes the way What If Puppets stays innovative with its education program — focusing on the creative development of the underserved ages of 0 to 8.

“It’s amazing that this group is running in the opposite direction that so many other people are,” she continued. “They’re running towards those little bitty ones and trying to give them their very first arts experience.”

Focusing on early education, instead of just storytelling, was an evolution and rebrand that took place under former executive director Meghann Henry — who departed in July for the Omaha Conservatory of Music — and Kibler said she plans to continue that mission.

From the archives: It’s not just storytelling anymore for one of KC’s most beloved children’s theaters

“One thing that I’m really excited about — that was already in place when I came on — is going even younger,” she noted. “So a lot of our work right now is in preschool. They’re starting a big infants and toddlers residency and they’re piloting that program right now, for as young as six weeks old. So that’s really exciting to get to watch.”

They are also working on making shows that are accessible as possible for all children, she shared.

“We’re really taking into account the different ways that neurodivergent students might experience it, as well as students with physical disabilities and physical differences,” she added. 

Performers and puppets at What If Puppets in Kansas City; photo by Travis Young, travislikesfilm

What If Puppets’ reputation for treating artists with respect also spoke to Kibler’s interest, she said.

“They bring on a lot of teaching artists and a lot of artisans who are full time,” she explained.  “That is a lot rarer in the arts community that often relies on contract artists. So I was really excited to see a company that was really taking care of their artists in that way.”

Kibler — who joined What If Puppets in early December — brings more than 20 years of experience in theater education, she shared. She has performed, directed, and taught at the Omaha Theater Company, the Orlando Family Stage, Visible Fictions in Glasgow, Scotland, and The Coterie. 

During her time at The Coterie, she directed three mainstage shows, produced all of the youth performances, founded Project Pride, created Classroom Immersions and early childhood classes, expanded Theatre School classes, implemented scholarship programs, and taught hundreds of students.

“That’s what brought me down to Kansas City — to be the education director at The Coterie,” she said. “I did that for almost 12 years and then decided to move to What If because I just saw a need for the skill set that I had gathered over the years in a different way and that was really exciting.”

Working with puppets will be new, Kibler noted, but she is up for the challenge. She enjoyed working with them during her puppetry arts class in grad school, so she is excited to dust off that tool from her toolkit and bring it to the forefront.

“Watching — as an educator and a lover of arts for young people — the way a young person reacts to a puppet is so exciting,” she continued. “They can connect with that inanimate object that is animated in a way that sometimes it’s hard for a young person to connect with an adult.”

“It’s so exciting just to watch those young people make those emotional connections and make those concrete social connections with a puppet, and then, they can spread it around to everyone else around them.”