Hi, I need a bit of advice. We're doing a panto of Dick Whittington and we'e got this lovely little mouse character. The Mouse is a sesame street style puppet, (only from the waist up). It's usually easy to hide the operator behind something but now we've got a problem. The Director has decided that the mouse should appear in the walkdown. If your'e familiar with panto, you'll know that this consist of all the performers walking down center stage and bowing (basically an elaborate curtain call), and ive just got no idea how to hide this puppeteer. Usually he just hides behind something. But the walkdown is set is some grand magical fairy pantoland, so none of the hides we're using in other scenes (e.g a shop's counter, a barrel on a ship) will look right, if we just plonk them there. Is there something we can construct,that will look right in this heaven like realm??, then he can just pop up from behind it. But then to add the confusion, the director said it would very nice if the puppet could some how "walk-down" like everyone else, i.e. move across the stage. Up until now the puppets appearances have been very obvious (i.e. behind something- punch and judy style) but for the final appearance the director would like there to be a sense of mystery about it, so the kids wonder "how did they do that? - that mouse must be real!". These are the ideas I have so far (and they're all kind of rubbish): - 4 of the tallest chorus dancers stand around the puppet as if they're carrying him on their shoulders and the puppeteer (whose quite short) hides behind them or - the puppet "drives" a remote control car along the stage or - we construct some elaborate cart-like truck that's wheeled on, white the puppeteer hiding inside But, they all sound quite problematic/potentially flawed/too much hassle for a 10 second appearance. I'm sure there's a much better idea that I just haven't thought of. Really I need advice from someone with experience in magic. Is there a magician's technique that involves concealing a stagehand or assistant that we could adapt?? Does anyone have an inventive way in which, this puppet could enter and exit, while concealing the puppeteer. Few! It sound's crazy when you say it like that! But yeah, any ideas would be happily received, I'm really scratching my head about this one. Thanks in Advance!!