Seton Hill ships puppets to Florida middle school drama program left without props one week before showtime

When Seton Hill University professor Lisa Leibering’s theater design students created puppets for a local middle school production of “Finding Nemo Jr.,” they never expected their work would travel more than 1,000 miles away from Greensburg.

But, when a middle school drama program director from Broward County, Fla., called about renting the puppets, Leibering jumped at the opportunity to help.

Beverley Shanahan, drama director for Somerset Academy Middle School, got the text Tuesday — the person who agreed to rent out their handmade “Finding Nemo” puppets to the Pembroke Pines school had backed out of the deal.

Though she had not yet put a payment down for the rental, the school was left without a critical component to their show, just five days before dress rehearsal and and about 10 days before showtime.

The drama program was supposed to receive the puppets on Thursday, Shanahan said.

Somerset Academy is not the only school to have essential production elements fall through at the last minute.

Last week, the Valley High School drama club discovered it likely had been scammed out of $8,000 for costumes and props by a company called The Staging Workshop. Multiple programs in the region pitched in to help with the New Kensington high school’s production of “The Addams Family.”

Days later, Linganore High School in Frederick, Md., reported its drama club had paid the same company thousands of dollars for costumes and props the club never received.

“(The students) learn by practice, practice, practice. We have dummy puppets. We have cut-out fish on a stick that they could learn the show with,” Shanahan said. “But, obviously, using the real thing has a different dimension, has a different weight.”

Shanahan’s music director scoured the internet for schools that had performed the show recently.

That’s when she came across a TribLive story about Trafford Middle School’s drama club, which performed the musical with Seton Hill’s puppets in March.

Leibering wanted to turn things around for the Florida middle schoolers.

“I want their memory to be that artists in Pennsylvania helped them out,” she said.

Leibering got to work. With the help of several interns from the university’s costume shop, which stores student-made props and costumes, Leibering spent more than four hours Wednesday packaging the 23 puppets into boxes.

The puppets, made of foam and soft fabrics, were safely squished into boxes, Leibering said. But larger puppets like Bruce, Anchor and Chum — the three sharks Marlin and Dory encounter on their way to rescue Nemo — presented a greater packaging challenge.

The Bruce puppet is 30 inches tall, 30 inches wide and more than 7¹⁄₂ feet long, Leibering said. His shark counterparts are 6 feet each. To be shipped by UPS, each package could be no more than 165 inches in width and length.

“I think one of them was 164.5 and another was 162,” she said.

They pieced the boxes into two cars before driving out to the UPS Customer Center in New Stanton, where Leibering and her assistant had to tear down and retape a few of the boxes to fit the size limit.

UPS staff stayed a half-hour late to make sure the packages were shipped, Leibering said. The puppets are slated to arrive at Somerset Academy on Saturday.

“I think I’ll be sitting with my face against the window looking for the UPS driver Saturday morning,” Shanahan said.

Though shipping the puppets to and from Pembroke Pines will cost about $4,000, Seton Hill is not requiring the middle school to pay the usual rental fee.

“It’s extremely exciting for me,” Leibering said. “Putting these really high-quality puppets in the hands of students …was really, really meaningful and a surprising opportunity to happen.”