Jeghetto Brings His Creature Puppets to Carrboro for the Fourth of July

The Town of Carrboro was ready with water misting tents for its community celebration events at Town Commons on the Fourth of July.

While shoppers enjoyed Carrboro Farmers’ Market, which coincided with the activities this year, at a pavilion along Bim Street, folks gathered for master builder and puppeteer Tarish Pipkins’s family show, Jeghetto’s Workshop.

His chosen stage name, “Jeghetto,” is a portmanteau of Geppetto and ghetto, to embrace his childhood in the public housing projects of Pittsburgh and that influence on his art.

Unfortunately, Pipkins was bitten by a copperhead on Wednesday, so his son, Tarin, who just graduated from high school, replaced him.  

Tarin has been performing with his dad across the country since he was eight years old.

“I just fell in love with it,” he said. “You know how kids are fascinated with stuff, like dinosaurs, and puppets kind of stuck with me.”

For about 30 minutes, Tarin articulated various marionettes that his dad makes from recycled materials, over hip-hop music through the crowd. There was a dog, a spider, a robot, and some fuzzy creatures, along with a big finale.

An important part of Jeghetto’s shows is interactivity, especially with kids. His work is about teaching social skills to kids. Inspired by a meeting with Fred Rogers, he settled on puppets as the vehicle for his message.

In an email to The Carrborean from the hospital bed where he was recovering from the snakebite, Jeghetto retold a NPR story he heard about a father with an autistic son who’d become nonverbal. He noticed his son speak to the TV puppet characters on Sesame Street. He pulled out the Muppets they had at home and was able to talk with his son for the first time in over a year through them.

On Saturday, the effect of Jeghetto’s creations on both kids and adults was plain to see. After skillfully and creatively manipulating the puppets and getting the crowd excited about each one, Tarin spent a good amount of time showing and passing the controls to anyone who was willing, mainly kids.

These hands-on experiences are also about engineering, as the audience sees how the puppets work and move, Tarin explained.

“They get to pull the strings and understand how the physics work.”

Jeghetto’s puppets are complex machines that move realistically and fluidly. Through them, he tells of the Black experience. Known for an upbeat approach, Jeghetto also makes what Tarin called “darker political stuff,” like his adult show, Just Another Lynching: An American Horror Story.

There was one unopened canvas bag by the end of the show, and as Tarin approached it, the soundtrack became dangerous roars. Then appeared the largest puppet of the day, a menacing T-Rex! The roars continued; its jaw swung open, and teeth were bared. Reactions from the kids it approached ranged from “Oh my!” to backing away from the creature, but with delighted faces. A woman put her hand all the way in its cavernous mouth.

While Jeghetto’s work is rooted in the high art of puppets, he’s an interdisciplinary artist with a hip-hop character and commitment to teaching and education.

His work, The Hip Hopera of 5P1N0K10 (SPINOKIO), flips the story of Pinocchio into an Afrofuturist fable about an android that wants to be a real B-boy.

A short film version of it will be streaming on Amazon Prime and Roku in a few weeks.

This summer, he’s starting Neurodivergent Puppet Camps at the F7 Black Stone Ranch in Mebane, NC. Learn more here.

Pipkins returned home from the hospital on Sunday. We wish him continued health.