Puppet-maker Cheryl Capezzuti first led a team of seven giant puppets in the First Night parade in 1998. Now she’s the creative director of the parade and oversees over 300 volunteer puppeteers who participate in the New Year’s eve festivities. Ms. Capezzuti, who originally planned to be an architect, took her first puppet making workshop in 1994. “I feel like it was the perfect combination of my skill set of being able to make anything in the world out of cardboard, loving to paint and my passion for imaginary characters and creatures.”
Each year she adds to the puppet collection, holding a series of workshops across the Pittsburgh region, to create new puppets for the parade. On a recent Saturday she held a workshop to make Pennsylvania native species basket-head puppets.
Jace Johnson, left, 6, of Penn Hills reacts as puppet-maker Cheryl Capezzuti tries on his basket-head puppet during a puppet-making workshop at the Braddock Carnegie Library in Braddock Saturday, Dec. 17, 2016. Jace created a chipmunk named “Chip” that he plans on wearing in the First Night parade.Michelle Johnson of North Braddock works with her children LeSean Jonhson, 3, center, and Makhia Ogletree, 12, back right, to paper mache a skunk basket-head puppet during a workshop held at the Braddock Carnegie Library in Braddock Saturday, Dec. 17, 2016. The puppets made during the workshop, of animals found in Pennsylvania, will be worn during the First Night parade on Dec. 31.A workshop attendee tries on one of the giant puppets stored in the Puppets for Pittsburgh library, a puppet-lending library, at the Braddock Carnegie Library in Braddock on Saturday, Dec. 17, 2016. “[Being a puppet] gives you the possibility of transformation. You put on a giant puppet and all of a sudden you are something way bigger than yourself. You get away with things you couldn’t get away with as yourself. There’s a silliness factor. Sometimes people in our world think they need to be serious all the time. I love that a puppet gives you the sense of not having to be quite so serious,” says Cheryl Capezzuti, who created the puppet library.Puppet-maker Cheryl Capezzuti reacts as she watches someone try on a giant giraffe puppet at her puppet-making workshop at the Braddock Carnegie Library in Braddock on Saturday, Dec. 17, 2016.Puppet-maker Cheryl Capezzuti, left, checks out a chipmunk basket head puppet made by the son of Karin Johnson, center, as her daughter Callie Johnson, 4, looks on at the Braddock Carnegie Library in Braddock Saturday, Dec. 17, 2016. “In many ways puppetry is an extension of my childhood interests. I got lucky. I found the thing that allows me to keep playing my whole life,” said Capezzuti. As a child she made paper dolls. “They were all sets of people color-coded by their eyes that belong together that did different things.”Puppet-maker Cheryl Capezzuti fills her home studio in Brighton Heights with puppets on Thursday, Dec. 22, 2016. The puppets will be part of Pittsburgh’s First Night parade.Puppet-maker Cheryl Capezzuti, left, jokes with Jace Johnson, 6, his mother Karin Johnson and sister Callie Johnson, 4, as they create basket head puppets in the shape of a chipmunk and a fox during a workshop at the Braddock Carnegie Library in Braddock Saturday, Dec. 17, 2016. The puppets, of animals found in Pennsylvania, will be incorporated into the First Night parade on Dec. 31.
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