Wherever former student Anna Enslow lived, she built stages, made puppets and wrote scripts. You saw something in me and never faltered in conveying to me that if I ever got serious, I could succeed in this business.” He later wrote her a letter from backstage at a production of August Wilson’s “Jitney,” saying, “I want to thank you so much for your patience and persistence. When UW football player Harvy Blanks took her class, she told him he’d never survive on the gridiron and was better suited for the stage. Whatever their goals, Valetinetti found ways to help and inspire, even when it meant pointing out difficult truths. Other students signed up for puppetry because they sought careers in the theater, or wanted to work as teachers and therapists for children.
They built sets and undertook the rigorous work of performing plays. They had to build their own puppets-using rods, sticks, strings and even paper plates. But they quickly learned that wouldn’t be the case. Many students took her classes to get an easy A. In 1959, she founded the Valentinetti Puppeteers (which replaced the U of W Puppeteers) and then capped her graduate studies with a thesis on the form of puppet plays. The more she studied its history, the more fascinated she grew with an art form that has been used for teaching and storytelling around the world for thousands of years.īy 1949, Valentinetti had produced all aspects of a hand puppet version of “Pinocchio,” including writing the script and making most of the puppets herself. In 1943, a week after graduating from the UW, Valentinetti was teaching her first puppetry class.
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She also put together an eight-week TV program on puppetry for her local public television station in Oregon. “She took us to a different level of experience through her love of puppetry, and how it dramatically related to learning about the world of storytelling and acting.”Īnother student, Sally Skelding, ’65, was so inspired by what she learned in Valentinetti’s class that she created her own puppet company. “Being with Aurora was like nothing I experienced in college,” wrote Steve Haines, ’71, who first signed up for a puppeteering class because it looked like an interesting elective. Over the decades, Hess says, she kept in contact with him-as she did with many of her students through much of their lives. A fine arts alumnus, Hess took puppet-making classes from Valentinetti in the 1960s. “In many senses we students were her family,” says Stanley Hess, ’64, the longtime curator of the Aurora Valentinetti Puppet Museum in Bremerton. But the future teacher, corporate trainer and-ultimately-stage manager got hooked and ended up taking four of her classes and an independent study. “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t adore her.” At first Diaz thought she’d take one Valentinetti class and move on.
“I’ve had a lot of teachers that have affected my life, but when I think about going to college, she’s the one I remember,” says Maria Diaz, ’84. In fact, a handful are so grateful for the effect Valentinetti had on their lives that they nominated her for a UW teaching legacy award honoring instructors whose influence has extended beyond the classroom. Valentinetti’s students are happy to set the stage with their own memories. “I was a very good teacher,” she says in a recent interview at her senior living residence in Wenatchee. And her fans may remember the popular holiday performances she produced for Frederick & Nelson’s window and-not to be overlooked-her local public television show.īut first came teaching.
She can also talk about the traveling troupe she organized to reach thousands of schoolchildren around the state. Aurora Valentinetti might not be able to recall all the fine points of her 50-year career in puppetry, but the 97-year-old retired UW professor can still conjure up a few details from her classes.
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