A Puppet Master Passes On

Joel Davis worked every job from puppeteer to bouncer. He could do last-minute masonry on the Farmington Canal and then hang paintings at the Shubert Theatre. He would offer you the shirt off his back, a ride in his boat, and a tour of a puppet theater that became a rare and quirky part of Branford’s history.

When he died unexpectedly last week, he left a creative community reeling.

Davis, who passed away Feb. 16, has been heralded as one of the last living puppeteers of the Sicilian puppets of the Stony Creek Puppet House Theater (also called the Macri-Weil Sicilian Theater). As friends and family prepare for his memorial Saturday, many have paused to remember his life as one defined by determination, quirk, artistry, and above all kindness.

A memorial service is scheduled for Feb. 29 at Stony Creek Congregational Church in Branford. Davis’ brother Frank Davis has also put out a call for memories, stories, and photographs. He has asked that those who wish to honor Davis’ life give to the puppetry conference scholarship program at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center.

“If you met Joey, you would know that he was one of those salt of the earth characters,” he said Friday, reached by phone. “Just unbelievably good. He’d give you the shirt off his back. If he told you he was going to do something, he was there and he’d do it. He could do pretty much anything he set his mind to doing.”

Born in 1960, Davis grew up as one of six kids in Stony Creek, when the area was still populated by middle- and working-class Connecticut families. Even as a child, he was curious—drawn first to the water and not long after, to the arts. As Frank Davis remembers it, the brothers first stumbled into the Stony Creek Puppet House by chance, after puppeteer Jimmy Weil left the door open.

In those years, the theater was a wacky and wonderful place. At its wildly beating heart sat a collection of Sicilian puppets, heraldic figures carved at the turn of the twentieth century by the artist Sebastiano Zappala. For decades, the puppets came to life as kings, queens, and knights, duking it out in intricate armor and chainmail.

In other words, Frank Davis said, it was exactly the kind of place a 13-year-old boy would feel at home. It didn’t take long for his brother to form a bond with Weil that lasted until Weil’s death in 2013.

Davis, who most often went by Joe, started to do odd jobs for Weil. Sometimes it was carrying around the massive puppets, and switching them out during performances. Sometimes it was teaching classes and groups that came through the theater about the art of puppetry, and the battles that they were about to see onstage. Before long, it was touring nationally with the puppets, which he and Weil did together for three decades.

They were adventurers. At one point, the two lived together on Gertrude, a 37-foot lobster boat that docked in Florida for almost a year. At others, they taught Stony Creek’s kids about Sicilian puppetry, passing the knowledge down to a new generation. When the theater fell on hard financial times, Davis was there with Weil fighting to keep it open.

“To travel around as a teenager, I think that kept him going with it,” Frank Davis said. “The puppets are not really easy to throw around and operate. They weigh a ton. But he was like a one-man show. He could direct, he could build, he would promote the place. ”

Davis stayed on as general manager of the Puppet House Theater, where he cared for the puppets and for the space. In the 1990s, when the theater began to go downhill, he tried to start a dinner theater, followed by attempts at a summer camp, multiple open mic nights, and countless community gatherings. Frank Davis recalled watching his brother learn to use Windows 95—which had just come out—to make and distribute his own posters and promotional materials.

When he wasn’t among the puppets, Davis was growing his big-hearted footprint on the water and with a series of fur children at home. There was a series of dogs: Boots, Ashley, Tess and Lucky, the last of whom is now living with Frank. For decades, he shuttled boats between Connecticut and Florida, where he helped rebuild homes and bridges that were damaged in tropical storms and hurricanes. In Stony Creek, he served as a volunteer fire captain, picking up pro-bono projects whenever something was in need of repair.

"He could build or fix just about anything," recalled Captain Captain James H. Titus of Branford. "He can always be counted on for a funny story to about the characters in the 'Creek,' and there are many." 

Davis was constantly building something, many of his friends remembered. Artist JoAnn Moran, who runs the eco-art nonprofit Lots of Fish, recalled meeting Weil and Davis 10 years ago, when she drove to Stony Creek in search of studio space. A small cottage next to the Puppet House had a “condemned” sign on it. Weil said she could use it anyway, if she agreed to bring it up to code.

She soon met Davis, who stunned her with his care and dedication to the puppets (“they really were like humans—each of them had their own personality,” she said). In 2011, she helped him pitch Sicilian puppetry in the New Haven Public Schools, scoring funds from the Neighborhood Cultural Vitality Grant Program to perform the legend of St. George and the Dragon around the city.

In a letter of support for the project, former East Rock Alder and Arts Council Executive Director Frances "Bitsie" Clark praised Davis and Weil for the work, calling it a portal to a magical past.

“Puppetry is an ancient art with which all children today are familiar because of Sesame Street,” she wrote. “But they have never seen anything like these huge masterpieces that looked like they came from the Italian Renaissance, let alone see them perform, watch how the puppeteers manipulate them and then try some of them themselves—it is an extraordinary opportunity.”

So it was not surprising to Moran that after Weil’s death in 2013, Davis continued to teach with the puppets to keep those memories alive. In New Haven, he also helped her with masonry and installation work, preparing a wall on the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail for her 2016 “Bike The Vote” mural and hanging work an exhibition of Jules Larson’s art at New Haven’s Shubert Theatre last October.

In recent years, Davis had faced health troubles, but rebounded. He and Moran had breakfast together the day before he died. Then he was gone.

“He told me how much better he was feeling,” she said. “I’m still kind of shocked. It’s hard.”

Former Branford First Selectman Anthony “Unk” DaRos, who knew Davis through his own work as a sculptor and worked on several puppet heads, described him as “a true gentleman,” with a huge heart for his craft and his community. Maureen DaRos White, an archivist at the Stony Creek Museum, also noted his generosity of spirit.

“Joe was passionate about the Sicilian puppets,” she wrote by email. “ He enjoyed the Stony Creek theater through the years. When he no longer had access to the puppets, he made his own to keep the traditions and stories of the puppets alive. He was generous with his time and even refurbished a puppet for the Stony Creek Museum.”

Davis’ death comes as the Puppet House property is reborn as the Legacy Theatre, which has vowed to honor its history of puppetry even as the puppets remain elsewhere. In 2013, the Legacy Theatre Group purchased the property, which sits at 128 Thimble Islands Rd. For the past two years, Artistic Director Keely Baisden Knudsen has been working towards completing a $4.2 million capital campaign and opening the building.

Musical Intervention Founder Adam Christoferson, who grew up in Stony Creek, noted on social media that Davis’ passing makes the revitalization of the theater feel more real.

“Many of my formative years were spent with some of the most recklessly creative and naturally talented puppeteers, musicians, artists, poets, intellectuals,” he wrote. “This building was home to all types and I wish the Legacy Theatre all of the best in the newness of its character and legacy of its raw and authentically artistic endowment.”

As he prepares for Saturday’s memorial, Frank Davis said he is still reeling from his brother’s death. But he is also grateful for the number of friends and colleagues who have emerged to share memories by email and on a Facebook page. The memorial will be followed by a party with food and music. With any luck, Moran said, puppets will also make an appearance.

Joe Davis wouldn’t have had it any other way.

A memorial service for Joel “Joe” Davis is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 29 at 11 a.m. at the Stony Creek Congregational Church in Branford. Donations in his honor can be made to the puppetry conference scholarship program at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. More information is available here.