Vincent Lovegrove may be better known as half of the famous and popular Toe Jam Puppet Theater. But on the evening of February 19, with about 40 children eagerly waiting for something fun to happen, Lovegrove inhabited his other persona, Mr. Vinny.
As Mr. Vinny, Lovegrove has ingeniously created a shadow puppet program, not unlike those performed for centuries in Japan. Lovegrove’s use of an overhead projector and cutout figures that range from pigs to insects to foxes and, yes, muffins, is brilliant. In his retelling of well-known children’s stories such as the “Three Little Pigs” and “The Gingerbread Man” along with others, Lovegrove has developed a unique interactive method for entertaining small children.
Yet it isn’t just children he entertains. Lovegrove is a natural performer. In a type of rapid-fire, stream of consciousness, he tells tales and asks the little ones questions, such as can they identify the silhouetted image projected on the screen. At the same time, he slings one-liners to the adults in the audience. He is hilarious. As one person said, “He has them eating out of his hand.” He meant the children but the comment applied across all age groups.
Lovegrove is a Marion resident, formerly from the far-away kingdom of Rochester. He graduated from Old Rochester Regional High School in 1985. He credits art teachers Becky Zora and Jean Hong for giving him the encouragement he needed to find his place in a setting where he did not always feel comfortable. “I wasn’t the best student,” he shared. But what he was good at was all things creative from performance to visual arts. He would go on with the encouragement of his family and school mentors to the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Lovegrove’s own child, the emerging artist Tallulah, attends Mrs. Bangs’ second-grade class at Sippican Elementary School, where the seven-year-old is just beginning to explore creative tendencies.
The Lovegrove family is a family of artists. Lovegrove’s parents earned a living as scrimshaw artisans. “I had to learn to keep myself busy,” he said as his parents labored at their creations in a home studio. Lovegrove would draw and create his own worlds. His mother attended the Massachusetts School of Art. His father, at age 80, has taken up painting.
While attending MICA, Lovegrove met performance artists, falling in with a group that also used puppets to tell stories. Fast forward, today Mr. Vinny has established himself as a highly respected and very funny children’s entertainer where his big voice and big persona fills a room with laughter – music to his ears.
But there is one more character in this story – enter Mr. White.
Daniel White is a fixture at the Mattapoisett Town Hall, where he is the videographer, webmaster, and all-round communications coordinator for the town. But long before he turned his skills to keeping Mattapoisett residents up-to-date, White was an educator. “Right out of college I was a teacher at Rochester Memorial School,” he told the Wanderer. That is where fate brought White and Lovegrove together.
As their paths intersected, White recognized talent in Lovegrove, noting, “He was such a special kid.”
White engaged Lovegrove to assist with creating seasonal displays. “I was always looking for creative ways to get the kids’ attention,” said White, who encouraged Lovegrove to help him build graphic displays.
“I encouraged his creative side,” White recalled with a chuckle. “…he was in my fourth-grade class… I had to balance his creative juices with his memorization of multiplication facts.”
On the night of the library performance, White was in the audience. He was awestruck. “I was so astonished to see his cutouts and storylines; everything was spot on,” said White.
At the end of the performance, White approached Lovegrove asking, “Do you remember me?” A heartbeat later the two men were embracing and celebrating that long-ago time when a teacher gave a struggling student what he needed the most: space, time and encouragement. In that reunion, joy abounded.
Today Lovegrove’s talent is on full display. Cultivated early on by family and teachers who accepted him as he was and inspiring him to explore his creative abilities, Lovegrove is giving small children something they need and deserve – silly fun in a complex world. Maybe the adults need that, too.
Mr. Vinny’s performance was sponsored by the Friends of the Mattapoisett Library and maybe a wiggly jiggle pig, a creepy-crawly bug, or a muffin. You never know.
By Marilou Newell
