A broad look at the fraught history of American puppetry (its marginalization as children's theater and its sudden explosion as high art) with an intimate thread following Dan Hurlin, a downtown artist who is creating a complex puppet work about an eccentric, Depression-era photographer. Dan has just recovered from a scorching New York Times review, which forced his last show out of theaters prematurely. Now he faces a wider backlash against puppetry, suggesting an eerie parallel between himself and his new puppet-subject - a portrait photographer whose stunning body of work was very nearly lost forever.

"How much can we feel for a block of wood?"