Free Neighborhood Tour with Alex & Olmsted: Happy Birthday, Mon Ami

Quel joli spectacle! Thoughts on Happy Birthday, Mon Ami

An Essay by Tom Tuke

After a freezing week of puppetry in the Windy (and snowy) City, Sunday sun shone down on the Southside of Chicago. Parents, children, locals, and visiting puppet-heads gathered outside the Experimental Station to watch Alex & Olmsted’s free hand-puppet show Happy Birthday, Mon Ami. It is their ode to France, to love, and to smelly cheese. With twenty minutes until  showtime, there was a line around the block, according to witnesses. With eight minutes to go, I arrived, feeling slightly Parisian myself, and, coffee in hand, I found the door locked. I was told that the show, part of the Free Neighborhood Tour, was full to the brim! Chicago sure loves puppetry, I thought to myself, as I schemed a way into the theater. This review was not going to write itself.

It took some sneaking, but I made it inside and watched the show from the rafters, Quasimodo-style. There was Sarah Olmsted Thomas straddling an accordion and wearing a beret; beside her, looming over the audience, a decadent puppet booth. Its proscenium was reminiscent of a Parisian apartment with its curtains drawn…and…voilà! There was our other cohost, a sleeping hand puppet named Jacques. There was a sea of children in the front, and it churned in excitement, waiting for the puppet to wake up. 

For the following half hour, we watched as Jacques and his fiancée, Colette, prepared for the imminent arrival of his American cousin (and birthday boy) Sam. They went about their day, with a rising sense of excitement, purchasing fromage, attempting to butcher frogs, making crêpes. In many ways it was un grand buffet of stereotypes, but to me it fell on the side of “pastiche of French culture,” as opposed to full-on parody. Alex & Olmsted were parodying themselves as American-performers-doing-French-characters. This balance became easier in the second half hour when Cousin Sam finally arrived on set wearing an “authentic Hawaiian shirt from Costco.” He became the All-American foil for the jokes, and the audience felt a little more at ease laughing at the quirks of another culture when they could also laugh at themselves.

While much of Happy Birthday, Mon Ami was an homage to traditional European hand puppetry, there was one significant shift: Colette was played by the human actor (Olmsted Thomas), while her lover was the puppet Jacques (performed by Alex Vernon hidden inside the booth). As a fellow hand puppeteer, I was slightly bemused at first. Would the audience invest in the world-building and truly believe in the story if there was a human there? Would the fantasy and illusion that the puppeteer and audience collectively build up be hindered by the presence of the actor? The reality is that, for many American children’s audiences, this is the norm: Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Sesame Street, and Barney & Friends. There is a long history of puppets and people interacting here. The presence of Olmsted outside of the booth brought a sense of calm to the raucous front few rows, and she was able to engage with the children in a way that a traditional hand puppeteer might struggle to do. She brought live accordion music, which felt vital to the town-square feel of the show. It also meant that the gentle satire of another culture had a human face, and we could see that Olmsted was laughing at herself and the ridiculousness of the scenario. 

In creating a puppet show about romantic partners working together, and the love between human and puppet, Alex & Olmsted have created something of a self-portrait. The married couple have been creating world-class puppet shows and touring since 2010. Both skilled actors, fabricators, and puppeteers, the two write and develop shows to showcase their own talents. Like the circus, puppetry has long been an art form suited to couples and families. It often involves being on the road for lengthy periods, performing in intimate settings, and incorporating a wide variety of aspects in which different members can participate. Olmsted Thomas herself is a fifth-generation performing artist. In Happy Birthday, Mon Ami, Alex & Olmsted ham up the romantic connection, with Jacques cooing to Colette: “You are ze salt to m’aspargus, the croque to my monsieur, the bubbles in my champagne!” While these words might seem silly, the puppetry itself is the testament to a special relationship in which Vernon and Olmsted Thomas navigate marriage, a business, and an artistic partnership together.

The funding of puppetry was a topic that kept bubbling up during the 2026 Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival. With federal funding for the arts being slashed in recent years, American theater companies have had to adapt rapidly. Alex & Olmsted have frequently been awarded grants from the Jim Henson Foundation and received one in 2024 for Happy Birthday, Mon Ami. They are resident artists at the Baltimore Theatre Project and have developed a network of collaborators in Maryland and beyond. A major part of their income is through online fundraising. Alex & Olmsted have developed a network of patrons, with whom they engage frequently on Patreon. Many supporters come to them for fabrication tutorials, which they upload regularly to their website (https://www.alexandolmsted.com/build-videos–tutorials.html). Members who pay more can engage with the duo on video, for personalized coaching.

Before I became Quasimodo, I was stuck outside for ten minutes or so. In this time I watched as people came and went. I became the de facto bearer of bad news, “Sorry, guys, it’s full.” Most people took this in good humor, and a local woman explained how much these free shows meant to people from her community in the Southside. “I try to come [to the festival] every year, and the tickets always sell out. The free ones are great, especially for the little ones.” After the show, I realized we had both snuck in to the back of this free puppet show. We chatted a little and reflected on the crowd. There was a fifty-fifty split of adults and children, and kids were excited to engage with the puppets, yelling “oui” with glee when called upon to do so. The crowd was somewhat reflective of the largely Black and Latino neighborhood that is South Chicago, and my fellow patron speculated that Happy Birthday, Mon Ami might be hard for some of the children to relate to. It felt like a show that focused on fancy cheese must be part of some kind of gentrification process. But the crowd seemed to lap up every moment and barely dispersed at the end of the show. We stuck around as Alex & Olmsted gave a small demonstration of the mechanisms and booth, while conversation flowed. 

Bravo! Quel joli spectacle!