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Some women wear many hats; Jamie McKittrick wears many masks. As a performer in the Enchantment Theatre Company’s "The Velveteen Rabbit," the 25-year-old spends the one-hour show operating a puppet, but not in the typical manner.
Donning a netted face mask and a solid-color costume that blends in with the Impressionistic background, McKittrick is always on stage, but does her best to keep the focus on the beloved title character that’s comparable in size to the torso of the resident from just off Ninth Street and Passyunk Avenue who is "a little shorter than 5-foot-4."
"It’s big enough that if a person my size were to hold it, it would be equal to the size of a stuffed animal to a child," she said of the puppet that usually is in front of her or sits on her knee.
Not seeing or hearing anything from McKittrick or the other company members who use masks, magic, puppets and music, paired with a narrator who provides the dialogue, creates a world that prompts the imagination. Towards the end, when the stuffed bunny becomes real, McKittrich dons a rabbit costume, but remains silent and faceless.
Prior to "Velveteen," which began rehearsals in the summer, touring nationally with about six performers in September and is at the new Suzanne Roberts Theatre on Broad and Lombard streets through Dec. 30, McKittrick traveled with the company’s production of "Cinderella," where she played, among other roles, a stepsister, a part that again required her to go behind the mask. As a taunter of the princess-to-be, McKittrick was harnessed into a puppet costume about her height that she maneuvered from inside.
"We’re able to take these grand leaps into a very heightened world," she said. "We can fulfill or create a really nice background where kids’ imaginations can go wild."
Graduating with a degree in theater from Muhlenberg College, the St. Louis native knew she wanted to be in Philadelphia. She spent a year in her hometown performing in local theater before making the jump, almost blindly, with a friend.
"I knew nothing about this city before I moved here," she said. "I had only come in a few times to audition before I moved here. But it was the theater scene that brought me here."
McKittrick said the city’s rich culture, paired with the nontraditional theater companies, appealed to her. After a perusal of the internet, she found several apartments, finally settling on one at the edge of the Italian Market, which she has lived in for just over two years.
"I really like the city of Philadelphia — it definitely has a smaller-town feel to it. I know my neighbors on my block — half have lived there for 50 years, the other half are like me and just recently moved here. It’s really lovely."
Once she arrived, McKittrick auditioned for Junction Dance Theatre, where she performed for a few months before heading to Florida in November 2005 for a stint filling in for an injured cast member in a friend’s production. She kept her apartment, returning in April ’06 when she auditioned for Enchantment. McKittrick always knew she wanted to get back to Philly and auditioned for Enchantment because she liked its unique approach to children’s theater. She has been touring and performing with the company ever since.
The group will set out again in January in a 12-seat passenger van with a truck hauling their set and equipment to perform for audiences of 200 to 1,700 people — mostly children — in cities throughout the country.
McKittrick said being on the road is a favorite aspect of the show, based on Margery Williams’ well-known, classic tale of a toy that becomes real.
"I love people," she said. "It might sound really cheesy or silly, but I love meeting different types of people, and you really get to do that on the road. Every town has a different cultural community and you get to briefly be a part of that, and that’s exciting."
McKittrick said, although she had relatively no experience with puppets before joining Enchantment, she’s enjoying the art form she was taught upon being hired.
"It’s always a challenge to figure out how to be as expressive as you need to be," she said. "But it’s no more of a challenge than developing any other kind of part. It’s a challenge in the way that if I was doing a play with heavy, difficult text and working on how I wanted to shape my voice and express the language of what was happening."
And this show in particular creates a unique outlet for expression, as McKittrick remembers it as one of the more heart-wrenching stories of her childhood. But she thinks no other child will have a similar experience watching the tale unfold on stage.
"I was a really sensitive child," she recalls, laughing. "I had not read that book since I was 4 or 5. I was just wrecked from it. I didn’t even remember that the rabbit turned into a real rabbit. I couldn’t imagine having my favorite toy taken away from me or me not knowing or caring, and allowing it to get burned.
"I have a feeling if I had seen it done live in a theater performance, it would have really helped me out. The story is dealing with some heavy stuff — what it is to really love someone or something and see how it changes."
And so far, the response has been overwhelmingly opposite to McKittrick’s initial reaction to the story — before going back and revisiting it as an adult, of course.
"There’s been a couple of times where I’ve heard in the audience the little ones get upset, when the rabbit is put in wheel barrel and taken away," she said. "And I totally feel for them in that moment, I’m like, ‘I know! I know! It’s going to be OK!’ And usually by the end everyone is excited and cheering and clapping."
That is the most rewarding part and, at the end of the day, she only hopes to continue stepping outside the norm in the world of performance art.
"I’m interested in theater that doesn’t settle," she said. "[Theater] that’s striving to go further, be it physically with the form, or with the language with ideas behind it. I like something to spark my interest, that’s what I like to see. I really think children’s theater is fantastic. That’s who the future audiences are. In no way do we condescend them; we don’t talk down to them. That’s something Enchantment is great for — they’re progressive and moving in that way."
And, at the end of this production’s five-month tour, coming back to the home she so bubbly gushes about is great, too.
"It’s an itty-bitty, block-long street so it’s quiet, but if I walk down the street, I’m right back in the middle of it all," she said.
