Puppets and scenery designed by Carl Broemel] The Cleveland Playhouse has had its puppet stage from the very beginning of the organization. Mr. Raymond O’Neil, the director, has always taken a great interest in the puppets. He believes, with Mr. Gordon Craig, that they might well serve as models in style, simplicity and impersonality for living actors, but he also avers that they are capable of presenting certain types of drama as effectively if not more satisfactorily than the best of actors, and certainly better than any second-rate performers. When the Cleveland Playhouse was still a very small, informal group it was decided to produce a serious marionette play. The director selected for this purpose _The Death of Tintagiles_, written by Maeterlinck expressly for puppets. A Cleveland artist, Mr. George Clisby, worked out the proper proportions for the marionettes and the stage and their relation to each other. It is recognized by all who witness them that the effectiveness and success of the Cleveland productions are due in great part to the happy proportions prevailing in the marionette scenes and the sense of a complete, harmonious whole which they create. Mr. Clisby also designed the costumes for the first dolls, and the scenery. Only the significant and essential was allowed upon his little stage, strong, simple lines and colors, a few poplar trees upon a hilltop in the blue dusk of the evening, or plain, gloomy chambers with high arches leading away into mysterious passages, or at the very last, merely a door, a massive, closed iron door set in bare walls. The figures were planned in the same spirit. Being very small they were given practically no features, a scowling eyebrow, a dignified beard, long hair or short, stiff or flowing, being sufficient indication of the type represented. Miss Grace Treat, who made and dressed most of the marionettes, caught and embodied the artist’s ideal in strange, tall puppets, naïve but marvelously impressive. The construction of these puppets, although extremely simple, had to be planned and executed patiently. Often a marionette was taken apart and made over again until the right effect, or the proper gesture, was obtained. The puppets are somewhat like rag dolls, of a soft material, stuffed with cotton or scraps, weighted and carefully balanced with lead. Five and at most seven strings are used and the control is very primitive. This studied simplicity in structure and in costume has given the Cleveland puppets a naïve style,--their limitations both defining and emphasizing the significance of each little figure. Miss Treat was also the master-manipulator of the puppets and in her hands the stiff little Ygraine took on heroic and tragic proportions.