The Sex Lives of Puppets
Blind Summit Theatre
3680 Walnut Street
Philadelphia
Feb. 7, 2026
“You love having your ass sucked.”
“I do! But I don’t like hearing it.”
The couple — a buttoned-up professional and a gruff, wild man — getting interviewed center stage were diving into the nitty gritty, fighting about the logistics of dirty talk and the subtlety needed to arouse a woman’s imagination. It might seem like conversation that should be reserved for the bedroom, but these weren’t people talking — they were puppets. So when one shouted, “Legs! Somebody get my legs!” to allow the two to screw with abandon, the audience laughed uproariously.
The Sex Lives of Puppets is one puppet show you shouldn’t bring the kids along for. Inspired by real-life responses from the UK’s National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, Blind Summit Theatre’s puppetry proved to be a surprisingly human approach to tackling taboo topics.
The show was broken into ten interviews, some with couples or sexual partners, others conducted solo. Though the set was sparse, the puppets' intimate confessions filled the space once they began talking. Each interview was tied into a humorous or touching bow by its end, all while probing intimate questions about power, submission, identity, age, grief along the way.
I learned from one of the four puppeteers that the heads of each puppet were made independently of the show: all of them were crafted out of styrofoam as an exercise for puppetry students. This detail made it feel like each puppet had their own life outside of the piece, offering an additional layer of character to the already highly personal play.
Charlie Lyne photos.
Every interview was introduced with a question, and even the bawdiest prompts touched on real issues. One couple’s question was: “What is a cum blob?” This led to two characters, Katie and Helen, giving a detailed description of their early sex life, and explained the story behind a blob of matter Helen once birthed after sex. The gross texture of the dialogue — and the blob — elicited groans of laughter from the audience. As Helen’s musings about sex and shame came to a poignant head, Katie interjected: “I flushed it down the toilet.” Laughter was an expression of relief for the audience as complex issues were concluded with light humor.
The audience struggled to keep their composure during individual interviews when earnestness went uninterrupted. Daz, for example, was one character who spoke honestly about the appeal of choking during sex. “Choking is not like anything else, it's carnal. Trusted to hurt not to kill,” Daz reflected. While Daz spoke, the set became cast in a blue light and it suddenly sounded as if we were underwater. Slowly, Daz curled into a ball suspended in mid air. During this scene of sincerity, intended to depict control and release, the audience could not hold back their snorts and giggles. Was it uncanny or uncomfortable to see something so human in a puppet? Or is this just how we react to human truths that we don’t understand?
The puppets were a smart way to channel the raunchy but real over the top sexuality of the show while establishing the distance and humor necessary to actually push the boundaries of what stories about sex we’re willing and able to accept. People who might be overlooked because they are too old, too reserved, or just too weird got the chance to speak openly about their feelings and desires through styrofoam sculpture. It left me wishing that people could be as frank about our fulfillment as these puppets had been with us.
