♪♪ Schroeder: My career is a triumvirate.

I've been an artist, a puppeteer, and a museum educator, and those things have been the three focuses of what I've been involved with throughout my life.

♪♪ My mom gave me puppets when I was a kid.

I played with marionettes.

I still have a marionette from third grade, so I played with string puppets from early on, and then I moved to hand puppets.

I stopped playing with puppets in high school, and then in college, I realized I really enjoyed playing with puppets.

"All right, all right, all right.

"I'm Smooth Earl, and I'm one of the puppets "in "Schroeder Cherry and his Puppets."

"We're a family, you know?

We're like a family.

Yeah.

"We got a lot.

"We got Ms. Lily, Dallas Dan, Africa Brown.

"You want me to keep going?

Because there's a bunch of us.

There's a whole bunch."

♪♪ This type of puppet is called a rod puppet, and the body itself is made pretty much like a doll, but the hands and the head are sculpted out of a wood.

The rod, I hold it from the bottom, but it goes through the body, through the chest, up into the neck, and it supports the head.

On the inside, there's a spring in the mouth, so when I pull a string which comes down here, I have one finger on the mouth, and my thumb is controlling the eyes, so when I move my thumb like this, the eyes open and close, and for the hands, one rod to each hand, so when I'm performing, I'm performing with one hand or two hands and then that kind of movement, so the hands are operated with the rods.

"I am Maya Opinion, and my thought for today is, it's a lovely day."

[Slurps] "Ahh, that's my opinion for the day."

♪♪ Growing up in Washington, D.C., I did have a pretty big playground.

I used to wander through the Smithsonian Institution.

You don't have to pay to go into a Smithsonian, so I could just go in through the doors... ♪♪ and it has had an impact on my life.

♪♪ Now I'm the curator for the James E. Lewis Museum of Art, also known as JELMA.

♪♪ So in this gallery, you've got works by Ernest Shaw, well-known Baltimore artist who's known for portraiture.

JELMA is on Morgan State University's campus, and we have a collection of African, Asian, European, and American art.

You can see his face, but if you look at the line drawing, that's an older version of this kid, so that's something that he's using in his work.

I was trained as a painter on canvas.

Later, I got my doctoral degree and focused on museum education.

♪♪ Museums do a really good job in helping people to understand the world, whether it's science or history.

Art museums let us know what artists are dealing with in the past or present and what they imagine might happen in the future, so it's all about imagination.

♪♪ "I'm Ms. Lily, and I am the puppet docent of the troupe, "so I give tours to adults, mainly in museums and galleries.

"Most recently, we were at the National Museum "of African American History and Culture, "and I had the opportunity to identify six objects "that the museum had recently acquired, "including a shawl of Harriet Tubman "that was given to her by Queen Victoria "and Nat Turner's Bible.

That was quite exciting."

Lily was delivering this tour, and I noticed that a couple of people were kind of unnerved when they realized that the voice they were listening to was a puppet.

I heard a couple of gasps like, "Oh, my God!"

Ha ha ha!

[Drill whirring] I'm a painter, but over time, I've become an assemblagist.

I do a sketch, and then I start adding objects to the piece.

[Router whirring] I'm using wood like a canvas.

I sew into wood.

I'm attaching things.

♪♪ Because my works tend to be narrative, whenever I add an object, the object lends to that storyline.

♪♪ The cards have become a part of the material that I use in the work with the assemblages, and they become to mean, "What do you do in life with the cards that you're dealt?"

♪♪ "When you talk about Dr. Cherry's assemblage, "I would talk about the different series "that he's worked on.

"I think he has 68 paintings in the "BarberShop" series.

"He tends to work in these series "because that gives him an idea of a narrative, and he just explores that as far as it will go."

♪♪ "The current series, The 'Future Voters,' he's up to number 22, I believe."

♪♪ [Drill whirring] During COVID, I birthed, like, five different puppets.

I sculpt the heads and the hands out of a plastic wood, and I sew the bodies.

The eyes are made out of ping pong balls.

They have a rod that goes in through the head to the other side.

Their face really comes to life when the mouth mechanism is connected and when you can see the eyes open and close.

Even the way the mouth moves can impact the voice that they're gonna have a little later.

"Oh, yeah.

My name is Tevin-- that's spelled with a T-- "and when we do shows, he's good at packing us and taking us around..." "because when we have to go places, "we have to be put in a trunk or a bag, and it gets really dark inside that trunk."

"He works us, though, because, you know, "every time we do a show, we got to do rehearsal.

"We got to do it again and again and again.

He's like that."

♪♪ Underground Railroad, ♪ not a subway ♪♪ ♪♪ He couldn't read, ♪ he died on his feet... ♪♪ The show that I have called "Underground Railroad, Not a Subway" is narrated by an older gentleman--Mr. Zeke.

First, when he shows up, the kids are laughing at him because many of them have never seen a Black puppet... Zeke: Have you ever lost something, something you wanted back real bad?"

Schroeder: but when Mr. Zeke starts speaking, that's when I hear the hush.

Boy: What's an underground railroad?

Woman: It's not a thing you can see, exactly.

It's something that helps slaves get to freedom.

Boy: Oh.

Schroeder: The show itself is about a little boy who runs away from slavery.

Boy: I don't want to be a slave all my life, so here I go.

Schroeder: We're getting across the fact that enslaved Black people did want to escape, and there were things that they had to do that were very dangerous.

Man: Did you see it?

Can you tell me where it is?

I want it back, and I want it back now.

Schroeder: Slave owners thought they lost something because they considered those people their property.

Man: I gives it a good home, and I takes care of it, so it's mine, right?

Children: No!

[Shouting] Schroeder: It's pretty dense with information, but, because it's a puppet show and it's done in fun ways, the audiences absorb a lot, I think.

♪♪ Underground Railroad ♪ had conductors ♪♪ ♪♪ Helped the slaves ♪ get away to freedom ♪♪ ♪♪ Black, brown, red, and white ♪♪ ♪♪ They helped the slaves ♪ stay out of sight ♪♪ With play, you are relaxed enough to be able to receive information.

Even if it's subconsciously, you'll be able to absorb information much more easily.

Girl: I liked the show because it was, like, important because they were showing you what happened a long time ago.

Boy: I learned that the Underground Railroad was a secret.

♪♪ [Applause] Schroeder: And that's our story for today.

Child: Bravo!

Bravo!

Schroeder: "Adults don't play enough, don't you think?

"They just have to bring in that inner child.

"I think we all have the inner child, "but we lose it when we become adults, "and it just goes somewhere.

"That's so unfortunate.

That's just my opinion, yeah?"

[Slurps] "Ahh.

Yes.

Play is very important."

♪♪