Our Story

In 1998, Paperhand Puppet Intervention’s directors Donovan Zimmerman and Jan Burger met and began a collaboration of epic proportions. Since then, 25 years ago, they have been using papier-mâché, cardboard, bamboo, your old house paints, cloth, and other assorted junk (treasure to us!) to create incredible giant puppets, masks, shadow plays and spectacle performances for all ages.

They continue to tell stories, beat drums, sew cloth, get sweaty, push boundaries and carry heavy things to help make the world a better place. Paperhand’s parades, pageants, and award winning performances aim to be an inspiration, a call to action, and a celebration for everyone to enjoy!

Our Mission

Paperhand Puppet Project’s mission is to create art that inspires connection. By practicing, performing and teaching the art of puppetry, we strive to nurture the best in humanity, build creative culture, and help celebrate and protect the natural world.

Our vision is inspired by our love for the earth and its creatures (including humans). We will synthesize many art forms including, but never limited to, sculpting, painting, dance, music, improvisation, costume design, set design and theater. We are committed to creating multi-scaled and multi-disciplinary puppet performances that support this vision.

We will use this puppetry, performance and creativity to undermine and eradicate greed, hate and fear and promote justice, equality and peace. We will work uncompromisingly to these ends.

We are celebrants.
We are activists.
We are puppeteers.

Our People

Paperhand Puppet Intervention is comprised of artists who share their energy, creativity, sweat, smarts, strength, support and hold a belief in our vision and promote our mission. Community is the lifeblood of Paperhand. It makes our creations, our performances and Paperhand Puppet Intervention’s existence possible.

Our Board

Heather LaGarde
Shirley Drechsel
Joan Siefert Rose
Ted Teague
Cary Worthy

Our Co-Founders & Directors

  • Donovan Zimmerman grew up in Cincinnati, where he cultivated creativity at the School for Creative and Performing Arts. After graduating, he embarked on 8 years of travel that took him across the Americas to draw, experience new communities, and begin making masks. This exploration ultimately led him to mask-making and co-founding his first puppet theater, Sticks and Stones, in Oregon.

    Seeking community brought Donovan to Saxapahaw, NC, where he connected with the vibrant Haw River Festival. Here he met his wife Lea and lifelong collaborator Jan Burger. For over 24 years together they have built Paperhand Puppet Intervention into the thriving puppetry arts theater it is today.

    Donovan resides on a 15-acre homestead in Saxapahaw with his family, where he continues to create as a puppeteer, stiltwalker, and visual artist. He co-directs Paperhand's productions, from inception to set construction to performing in handmade masks.

    Above all, Donovan brings a spirit of creativity and community to Paperhand's unique brand of puppet theater. He continues the habit, cultivated since childhood, of practicing and sharing his art.

  • Jan Burger is a co-founder and director of Paperhand Puppet Intervention, a puppetry arts theater. He creates across disciplines as a puppeteer, printmaker, papercutter, stiltwalker, activist, cartoonist, amateur naturalist, and accordionist.

    Jan co-founded Paperhand with Donovan Zimmerman to collaboratively make puppet shows from start to finish - from initial ideas while walking in nature to building puppets with volunteers using paper mache and cardboard, performing in masks.

    Jan has studied art, nature, and cartooning. He's worked with Bread & Puppet Theater, Art and Revolution Convergence, The Boston Puppeteers Cooperative, and the Shoddy Puppet Company. Jan learned much of his craft at large scale demonstrations, crafting hundreds of puppets and banners with fellow artists to protest injustice and destruction of the Earth, while sharing DIY techniques with fellow puppeteers.

Paperhand Has Been Around
For Over 20 Years

If you want to learn more about our origin story, the people we’ve met along the way, and the work we’ve been doing in North Carolina and across the world, we published a book for our 20th anniversary back in 2020, Paperhand: Puppet Interventions with Cardboard Cloth And Clay.

This coffee table book is full of photos, drawings and stories from
Donovan and Jan.