Feeling the Tugs of Faith : Religion: Renowned puppeteers Roland and Verna Sylwester will revive their Nativity production for a day at a Granada Hills church.

A man who has been manipulating the likes of Elijah, Daniel, Jesus and Judas for a quarter century is going to bring Mary, Joseph and the shepherds out of retirement for at least one more pre-Christmas one-nighter.

Roland Sylwester of Granada Hills, 68, estimates that since 1966 he has put on 1,500 performances of religious dramas with a variety of puppet figures in his Marionette Theatre of the Word.

However, three years ago, Sylwester (pronounced Sylvester) and his wife, Verna, both having recently retired from teaching at Lutheran schools, put away the big puppets with their giant stage and began concentrating on simpler productions with hand puppets. One reason was that they were making more cross-country tours than they had previously.

“It takes two hours to set up the marionette stage because it’s 12 feet high, 17 feet wide, including the wings, and 8 feet deep,” Sylwester said. The one-third-life-size figures are manipulated by Roland while Verna handles the lighting.

The Sylwesters sold the van that had transported the marionette stage more than 250,000 miles. In 1991, they briefly revived the Nativity production for Lutheran churches in La Crescenta and South-Central Los Angeles when those congregations provided transportation. The couple wasn’t planning to do more but changed their minds for family reasons.

“We decided to do our marionette production of the Nativity again because we have some grandchildren that have never seen it,” Sylwester said.

The five grandchildren who live in Granada Hills--as well as the public--will be able to see the show at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Our Savior’s First Lutheran Church in Granada Hills. Another three grandchildren who live in San Pedro might also come.

The Sylwesters are not the only puppeteers who perform in religious circles. The Fellowship of Christian Puppeteers has practitioners, mostly based on the East Coast, who perform in churches. In Los Angeles, the Jewish Television Network produces a half-hour cable program, “Alef . . . Bet . . . Blast-Off!” with Jim Henson-style puppets and human actors.

Most puppeteers today, whether they work in secular or religious contexts, use the Henson-like hand puppets, moving the mouths with their fingers.

But the Sylwesters employ many puppet characters whose mouths don’t move. Even normally inanimate objects come to life in some plays. One segment of their production, “The Puppet and the Word,” utilizes simply a hammer and pair of pliers.

Betsy Brown, who has taught puppeteering at Valley College and Cal State Northridge, describes Sylwester as a nationally known performer in the art. “He’s done some splendid workshops at Puppeteers of America conventions,” Brown said.

Sylwester has been fascinated with puppets since 1950, when he saw a marionette production by art school students in Berkeley. In 1965, Sylwester was putting on a marionette show titled “And Then Came the Smog” when someone asked him if he had a religious play that could be included in a church-based religious arts festival in Huntington Beach.

A year later, the couple presented “Elijah and the Prophets of Baal” and they have stuck to religious drama ever since.

“We consider this a ministry,” Sylwester said. “We don’t need to make a living from this.” The couple, who moved from Carson to Granada Hills in 1977, perform in the many schools of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, their denomination, as well as churches of other denominations.

“We sometimes do it in the sermon portion of the Sunday morning service,” he said. “As ultraconservative as the Missouri Synod is, they accept it.”

If any congregation doubts whether puppets are compatible with pulpits, Sylwester cites historical precedents from the Middle Ages, when puppets and marionettes were used in Catholic churches for dramas based on Bible stories.

The Sylwesters have certain production values added. A tape plays their recorded dialogue, with Verna providing a female voice in each play, and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach accompanies the action.

The Nativity play, “I Would Take You to the Christ Child,” written by the Sylwesters, contrasts the faith of a stable boy with the indifference and cynicism of adults in Bethlehem in a retelling of the story of Jesus’ birth.

“These productions are aimed at all ages, but there is a message too,” he said. “This is serious--not cutesy puppet stuff.”

Although they rarely revive the big marionette dramas, the Sylwesters are frequently on the road with their smaller puppets. They have three Sunday morning performances scheduled Dec. 5 at a Bakersfield church and shows planned at five different churches or church schools between Dec. 8 and 17.