Goat on a Boat Grows Up

The Goat on a Boat Puppet Theatre, which has occupied the lower level of the Christ Episcopal Church parish house in Sag Harbor since 2001, will move to Bay Street Theater this fall.

“We’re growing up a little bit,” said the Goat’s founder, Liz Joyce. The not-for-profit puppet theater has become a mainstay for parents of young children who had few options for fun and entertainment when it first opened 14 years ago. Now Ms. Joyce not only performs at the theater but also takes her puppets on the road to venues across the South Fork and beyond, while also hosting visiting puppet troupes and performers from around the Northeast.

Joining forces with Bay Street “frees me to be more creative,” Ms. Joyce said over the phone Tuesday from the National Puppetry Festival in Connecticut. At Bay Street, Goat on a Boat can mount a variety of shows it could not accommodate before. Case in point: The introductory show, “Everybody Loves Pirates,” which Frogtown Mountain Puppeteers of Bar Harbor, Me., will present at Bay Street next Thursday at 11 a.m.

“I always wanted to have them at Goat on a Boat, but they couldn’t fit,” Ms. Joyce said. Bay Street’s larger stage can easily accommodate the show, which includes an eight-foot papier-mâché pirate ship.

She will have the flexibility at Bay Street to do shows that fill the big stage, smaller ones in which the audience can sit onstage with the performers, and some that take place in the lobby.

The partnership feels “symbiotic,” Ms. Joyce said. “We bring our not-for-profit to their not-for-profit and help them cover an audience they’re not reaching” — 3 to 8-year-olds. In the process, Ms. Joyce gets to focus more on the performances, puppets, and talent than on things like bookings and insurance and changing lightbulbs. “It’s very exciting because it just frees the Goat on a Boat up from all the admin,” she said.

After the Bay Street show next Thursday, productions will continue at the Goat’s old theater on Thursdays through Saturdays through Aug. 29. The official move to Bay Street will take place during Sag Harbor’s Harborfest on Sept. 12.

“We’ll have a moving party and a puppet yard sale,” Ms. Joyce said, and Minkie the Monkey, one of her puppet creations, “will do a show about growing up and changing, and then we’ll have a musical stroll down to Bay Street.” Off-season shows will be on Saturdays at 11 a.m. on holiday weekends and every Saturday in March.

Those who appreciate the art of puppetry know that it’s not just for kids, and Ms. Joyce hopes programming will include a puppet slam for adult audiences sometime in the winter.

Ms. Joyce will take the Goat’s Puppet Club for 5 to 8-year-olds to Bay Street but will leave behind Tot Art and other programs for preschoolers. “I’ve outgrown that a little bit,” she said, and now there are so many more offerings for that age group than there were when she started the theater. When she opened, the Children’s Museum of the East End had not yet been built, for example.

To prepare for the big move, Ms. Joyce has ramped up the programming at Goat on a Boat this summer, bringing in a different visiting troupe almost every weekend. Tomorrow and Saturday at 11, Theatre Deux Mains from Montreal will perform “Le Cygne,” or “The Swan,” a wordless ugly-duckling tale. The Puppet Company will visit from New York on Aug. 21 and 22 to present “Al E Gator and Friends,” a marionette show, and from Aug. 27 through 29 Bonnie Duncan will present “Lollipops for Breakfast.”

Tickets to shows at the Goat cost $12, $8 for children 3 and under and additional siblings, and $10 for grandparents.

Tickets for the show next Thursday cost $10 for children, $12 for adults, and can be purchased through Bay Street.