PUPPETS: Humans Lend a Hand to Breathe Life Into Art Form : “‘Oh, honey, these are my “summer” diamonds,’ Lana explained as she luxuriated on Bettridge’s lap. ‘Yes, some are and some aren’t!’

There’s a rocky, dusty hilltop in Spring Valley where puppets are born.

High above the auto repair shops, tiny horse pastures and shambling out-buildings here is the doorway that leads adventurers into the Land of Tairy Fale.

Some people might think the back of Cari Prescott’s garage is nothing more than a workshop, a cleared space barely big enough for three adults to stand by the makeshift countertop. But Prescott knows better. It’s the place where Forest Pathfinder, Tusk, Clem Stover, Sunny Surf, Warts, Hornbrow and E.Z. Deal first introduced themselves.

The Tairy Fale denizens started to emerge six years ago, when the middle-aged father of three first stuck his fingers into a pile of wet clay to see what kind of puppet creatures might emerge. He had never sculpted before, never had any art training.

In fact, Prescott says he still can’t draw. He works mostly from his mental self, letting his puppet faces happen as they will, drawing from--who knows? Perhaps the same puppet-stuff that saturates and inspires the lady who lives down the road, San Diego’s official Puppet Lady, Marie Hitchcock.

Is this Spring Valley site, tucked into a rocky hillside with a magnificent view, really a camouflage for the Land of Tairy Fale, the mythical kingdom envisioned by Prescott as the home of his puppet family?

There’s something infectious about puppets. The lively little creatures instantly upstage their creators, fascinating adults as much as children and getting away with outrageous remarks no actor could ever pull off. At least that’s how Prescott, who works with hand puppets; Hitchcock, 38 years the grande dame of San Diego marionettes, and ventriloquist Timm Bettridge see it.

Bettridge finds that even if his lips move, no one notices. His gloriously flamboyant compatriot, Lana Lamour, dripping with antique jewelry and yards of turquoise satin, is so attention-grabbing that he has even had jealous women pull her blonde locks at parties.

“Oh, honey, these are my ‘summer’ diamonds,” Lana explained as she luxuriated on Bettridge’s lap. “Yes, some are and some aren’t!” she cackled.

Hitchcock, with steady support from local service groups and individual volunteers, has entertained thousands of children and adults, gathering heaps of official awards and honors. Her sister, Genevieve Engman, actually builds the marionettes, many of which resemble real San Diegans.

Hitchcock claims she is trying to slow herself down to accommodate her advancing age. Not likely. Just put a few puppet strings in the hand of this 75-year-old, add a single child to be enthralled by the dancing, acting creatures, and watch her years fall away.

Where once there was one child, there

are suddenly two--one giggling and petting the black-and-white spotted dog called Bum and one delightedly pulling the strings.

Prescott, who started his puppeteering a decade ago with Lamb’s Players’ touring company, often sits in full view with his life-size puppets. No one ever looks at him, he said.

Once, while filming a television commercial, one of his fuzzy-haired puppets insulted the head of a major advertising agency. Taking a long look at the overweight executive, the hand puppet asked, “What do you eat for lunch--furniture?” The man roared with laughter, Prescott said. He never considered firing the actor who dreamed up the insult.

Whether you believe in the Spring Valley Puppet Phenomenon or not, there is ample evidence that these cloth-and-fur creatures are multiplying.

This summer, audiences watched a chic, contemporary production of Odon von Horvath’s “Figaro Gets a Divorce” at the La Jolla Playhouse that opened with a puppet show--not the kind meant for children but a highly political statement about dictatorship dreamed up by director Robert Woodruff and his scenic designer, Doug Stein.

At the San Diego Repertory Theatre, Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s currently running “Little Shop of Horrors” is inhabited by a very hungry plant puppet nicknamed “Tooey.” Besides stealing scenes and devouring several actors, the people-eating puppet grows through seven stages of complexity, ultimately demanding five puppeteers to keep its tendrils waving and its teeth gnashing.

Puppets are an ancient fascination, as much the preoccupation of adults as children. They are more than entertaining. They have been used as religious symbols, political tools, and therapeutic devices.

They are found around the world in forms as varied as the human imagination. There are shadow puppets, hand puppets, rod puppets, marionettes (or string puppets), and enough variations on the basic forms to dazzle modern children of all ages with creations such as Yoda from “Star Wars,” Steven Spielberg’s E.T. and thousands of Jim Henson’s Muppets.

Last week, a group of irreverent British puppeteers invaded American television with “Spitting Image,” a scorching political satire populated with puppet caricatures of Ronald Reagan, Sylvester Stallone, Jack Nicholson, Henry Kissinger, Tina Turner, Johnny Carson, Richard Nixon and Jackie Onassis, to name a few. It was definitely not directed at children.

“ALF,” on the other hand, will be NBC’s attempt later this month to draw a young audience to a prime-time sitcom centered on an Alien Life Form--not a new idea, except that the series star is an odd-looking puppet.

Such high-tech competition doesn’t cause Marie Hitchcock a glimmer of concern. Years of performing have revealed to her the secret of puppet success.

“A puppet is nothing but some wood, some plastic, some different kinds of materials--nothing,” she said. “It’s just an inanimate object, and you have to breathe a soul into it. I know this sounds ridiculous, but if you have a hand puppet, you’ve got to let the love run up your arm. If it’s a marionette, you gotta let the love run down the string--and it really gives them a soul.”

Hitchcock’s puppets don’t always talk, but people think they do, she said. She uses taped voices for characters like Steve Garvey, Fire Capt. Safety and Police Sgt. Friendly, who highlight her educational shows.

The Puppet Lady insisted that she’s really a very shy person, and very awkward. She never even saw a puppet until she was in her 30s, but it was obviously love at first sight. She still works with her very first marionette, Toto the Clown, a delightful little acrobat whose worn clothes and 39-year-old parts don’t seem to matter at all.

“I get embarrassed sometimes, to tell you the truth, because I don’t have anything. I don’t have any of these very, very complicated (puppets),” Hitchcock said. “It’s just love.”

Murgatroyd, the only Muppet-style puppet in Hitchcock’s cast, would agree. The big, well-worn puppet has held a million fingers in his big fuzzy mouth, she said. It’s a traditional kind of Murgatroyd kiss that nobody can resist, and like all forms of love, it must be experienced firsthand to be understood.

Bettridge got into puppetry a year ago as an artistic challenge. He had been fascinated by vaudeville since his childhood and wanted to give ventriloquism a try.

He carves his hand and rod puppets from Styrofoam, adding special touches of pink lame (for his Maestro, who has his own, Bettridge-built grand piano), sequins, rainbow jewelry (for the Latin loudmouth Chikita) and creating skin tones with ordinary house paint.

Although most of his audiences are adults, Bettridge’s most satisfying job was at the New Alternative School, a San Diego County program for abused and other troubled children from age 12 to 19.

“The kids started out being very uninterested, as they tend to be,” Bettridge said. “They get a lot of guest speakers over there who are real boring, and some of them don’t even show up.”

It didn’t take long for Bettridge, Lana and Chikita to warm up the reluctant audience. Before he left, Bettridge had the students doing improvisations with the puppets, opening up and participating in a way that amazed school officials, who are looking for the funding to hire the puppeteer for a 10-week workshop.

“Lana went around and talked dirty--puppet dirty,” he laughed. “The kids loved it.”

The healing power of puppets is what keeps Prescott coming back to them, even though he works days as a landscape artist to support his family, keeping his dreams of Tairy Fale home videos on hold for now.

When he picked up his first puppet, Prescott was still a long-haired, bearded biker, just emerging from a drug-influenced existence and a nowhere blue-collar job. Something clicked instantly.

It’s the same factor that ultimately led him to develop a complicated process of sculpting, pouring, shaping, air-brushing and costuming his latex puppets.

“I just thoroughly enjoy creating. Some people love to draw, some people love to cook, some people love to race cars. They do it because they get that feeling inside of them that makes them go, that makes them tick,” Prescott said.

“There’s a lot of times I’ll come home and I’m depressed and tired and beat and just, I don’t want to hear from anybody, I don’t want to talk to anybody, and I’ll go in the garage, slap some clay down on the table . . . I just start putting my fingers into it and whipping the tools around, and I come up with something,” he said. “It just kind of releases all this stuff, this garbage that you get bombarded with.

“Then, too, there’s the second part of it. You know, that’s the first joy of it--you’ve created it. Then, you get to go out there and perform it for somebody. . . They sit down and the puppet can say a couple of jokes, and all of a sudden they’re laughing and they’ve forgotten everything and they’re being entertained.

“I get joy (from( that . . . that I’m able to do something for someone else to make them feel good, and I feel good doing it. So we’re both getting paid for it.”

Hitchcock and Bettridge would agree. The economics of art being what they are, that’s the best kind of payment a puppeteer can receive.