The Long Christmas Ride Home is written by Pulitzer-winning playwright Paula Vogel and directed by Kathleen M. McGeever. This play of contradictions uses puppets, yet it is not written for children; it is framed by a holiday trip home but is not meant as a Christmas story.
The play presents the family using human actors and puppets inspired by traditional Japanese bunraku puppetry, or as Vogel is quoted saying, “one Westerner’s misunderstanding of bunraku.” The puppets represent the children in some scenes, while the puppeteers themselves take over as the grown children in others.