Idol Hands

How Garrett Poladian and Ethan Crystal Create Meaning Through Movement, Puppetry, and the Art of Never Sitting Still

By Ricky Anderson

Everyone loves puppets.

That sounds like an overstatement until you watch one walk onto a stage.

The audience knows it is not real. They can see the rods, the strings, the mechanics, and often the performer standing right beside it, manipulating every movement in plain sight. There is no attempt to hide the trick. In fact, puppetry often asks us to acknowledge the trick before it asks us to believe in it.

And yet, almost immediately, something extraordinary happens.

The brain surrenders.

The puppet stops being foam, fabric, wood, or paint. The performer recedes into the background. A collection of materials suddenly acquires a personality, a point of view, a soul. Somewhere between movement and intention, the object becomes a character.

For centuries, puppetry has occupied a singular place in storytelling. From the towering animals of The Lion King to the gleeful irreverence of Avenue Q, from the haunting horses of War Horse to the technological marvel that was King Kong, puppets invite audiences into a shared act of imagination. They ask us to suspend disbelief not because they disguise reality, but because they reveal it.

The audience sees exactly how the magic is made and chooses to believe anyway.

For Garrett Poladian, that act of belief feels deeply personal.

Long before he was building puppets, performing with them, and creating entire worlds around them, he was simply a kid trying to find a place to put his energy. Growing up in a military family meant constant movement and constant adjustment. Community theatre eventually became the first place where all of that motion could be transformed into something productive.

“I started to just come alive,” he recalls.

Theatre gave shape to an energy that previously had nowhere to go. Acting, dancing, designing, writing, performing, building. Looking back, Poladian’s creative journey feels less like a career path and more like someone exploring every room in a house before realizing they were all connected.

The industry often asks artists to specialize. Pick a lane. Become the dancer. Become the actor. Become the designer.

Poladian never seemed particularly interested in choosing. What once felt like creative restlessness eventually revealed itself as something closer to preparation. Because puppetry, perhaps more than any other theatrical discipline, demands all of those skills simultaneously.

A puppeteer is an actor. A dancer. A storyteller. A designer. A technician. A problem solver. A collaborator.

The art form does not ask for one part of you. It asks for all of you.

Poladian’s first introduction to puppetry came through a community theatre production of Avenue Q. At the time, it simply felt like another skill to acquire. Another creative language to learn.

Years later, however, that language would become central to his artistic identity thanks to a chance creative partnership that began aboard a cruise ship.

While performing on a Norwegian Cruise Line, Poladian met fellow performer Ethan Crystal. Both were young actors with ambitions that extended beyond performing. Both were interested in writing. Both were fascinated by comedy. Most importantly, both were looking for ways to create work of their own.

What began as friendship quickly evolved into collaboration. “I learned pretty quickly that this guy was a comedy genius,” Crystal says. “He would just do and say things that astounded me.”

The two spent countless hours talking, pitching ideas, making each other laugh, and trying to identify what kind of stories they wanted to tell.

Neither knew at the time that those conversations would eventually lead to nearly a decade of creative partnership.

The catalyst arrived through a story Poladian told about a miserable high school job opening a smoothie shop before dawn each morning. Somewhere in the haze of exhaustion and boredom, his imagination wandered toward a ridiculous question.

What if Gollum (yes, that one) owned the smoothie shop?

The image was absurd enough to be funny on its own. But the more they discussed it, the more possibilities emerged.

What started as a joke gradually became Golem Owned a Tropical Smoothie, an original musical that both men have spent years developing together.

And almost immediately, they realized their title character could not be played by a person.”It just lent itself to being a puppet,” Poladian says.

There was only one problem: neither of them had any meaningful experience building one.

Crystal laughs when discussing those early days, describing his own puppetry experience as essentially nonexistent. But like many artists working without a roadmap, they responded to the challenge with curiosity instead of caution.

Poladian began watching tutorials. Supplies were gathered from craft stores. Foam, fabric, glue, and trial-and-error became their curriculum. What emerged was not a polished professional creation, but something far more valuable.

After all, you can learn anything on YouTube.

When Crystal first saw the puppet sitting in Poladian’s cabin, both men instinctively understood they had stumbled onto something worth pursuing.

What neither of them could have anticipated was how completely puppetry would begin to reshape their creative lives.

Nearly a decade later, that first homemade creation has evolved into an expanding universe of characters, productions, and possibilities. More importantly, it has provided a framework through which Poladian’s seemingly disparate interests suddenly make perfect sense.

When he talks about puppetry, it becomes clear that he does not view it as separate from acting, dancing, design, or writing. It is the culmination of all of them.

Every discipline feeds the puppet, which in turn becomes the vessel through which all of those artistic instincts can coexist.

Watching Poladian perform feels less like watching someone operate a puppet and more like watching someone distribute their imagination across multiple bodies at once. He is simultaneously performer and creator, technician and storyteller, actor and architect.

The work demands a complete physical and emotional commitment. There is no standing still. There is only listening, responding, adjusting, and bringing something to life. Perfect for the restlessness of an artist like Poladian.

Reflecting on the years spent developing Golem Owned a Tropical Smoothie, Poladian points to one of the most valuable lessons the process has taught him.

“At face value, things have no meaning,” he says. “It’s about creating meaning in them.” That is an observation that feels equally applicable to puppetry itself.

After all, a puppet is objectively meaningless, until someone picks it up.

When someone gives it a voice, when someone invests it with intention, then the audience decides to care. The transformation happens in real time, right in front of us. We watch an object become something more than itself.

Perhaps that is why puppets continue to resonate long after childhood. Not because they are childish. Because they are hopeful. They are vessels for pure creativity. They remind us that identity is something we construct. That transformation remains possible. That imagination possesses real power. That belief itself can be an act of creation.

For Poladian and Crystal, those ideas extend far beyond puppetry. They are embedded in the work itself. What began as a friendship became a partnership. What began as a joke became a musical. What began as scraps of foam and fabric became a living character.

The audience sees every step of the process and believes anyway. That, in many ways, is the miracle of theater. Because at its core, a puppet is simply an extension of the artist bringing it to life. An extra set of hands. An extra voice. An extra heart.

The performer disappears. The character emerges. And for a little while, everyone believes.

For more information please follow: @garrettpoladian @ethancrystal1 @golemmusical @rickypresents