Susan Linn with her longtime puppet, Audrey Duck. Photo by Sarah Nolen
Audrey Duck will tell you about the hardships she’s survived: cancer, diabetes, homelessness and depressed parents. Then she will tell you that although she is not alive, her trauma is.
After all, Audrey is a puppet.
But in the hands of ventriloquist Susan Linn, Audrey is something closer to a stage partner.
On March 11 and 12, Linn will bring Audrey out of her drawer and onto Brookline’s Puppet Showplace Theater stage in “WHAT THE DUCK?!?” — an offbeat show that combines stand-up comedy with philosophical musings.
Together, the pair will discuss life, death, politics and morality.
“It’ll be fun and moving and a little ironic and tongue in cheek,” Linn said in an interview.
The Brookline resident has performed at the Puppet Showplace Theater for years and developed “WHAT THE DUCK?!?” before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Though the show leans toward absurd humor, Linn’s work with puppets has long been rooted in serious conversations.
A psychologist with a doctorate in education, Linn began her career helping children work through emotional and physical wounds.
For seven years, Linn worked at Boston Children’s Hospital’s AIDS Program, where she used puppets as a form of play therapy. There, she helped children cope with illness from HIV/AIDS, hospitalization, parents with HIV/AIDS and death.
In 2025, Linn collaborated with the Brazelton Touchpoints Center to create a series of videos that help adults and children have difficult conversations about separation, bullying and also being a bully.
“Susan helps Audrey understand what she’s feeling and how to handle it,” said Joshua Sparrow, executive director of the Touchpoints Center.
Linn and her puppets were featured on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” in the 1970s and ’80s, where she created episodes that helped kids with cancer return to school, children cope with racism and navigate mental health issues.
“My shows for children were fun and not sappy or preachy, but they were rooted in healthy child development,” Linn said.
For much of her career, Linn used puppets to help children process difficult experiences. Eventually, she began receiving requests to aid adults.
One request stands out. Linn recalled a time when a friend’s family asked her and Audrey to participate in a healing circle to talk about the friend’s impending death.
“Puppets are real and not real all at the same time,” Linn said. “Puppets can say things that people don’t. They can express feelings in ways that can be provocative.”
That willingness to approach uncomfortable subjects is part of what makes Linn’s adult performances unique, said Karen Bray, a dancer and artist who became a fan of Linn’s.
Bray took one of Linn’s ventriloquism classes and praised her ability to balance her humor, intelligence and political commentary with mature topics.
In Linn’s class, Bray learned how to create an identity for a puppet that could be used therapeutically, such as being a friend or an advocate for the puppeteer.
“It’s not just yourself sharing your deep issues or your traumas,” Bray said. “There’s some distance to it, which gives it a lot of safety and gives it a lot of comfort when you’re talking about something difficult.”
Now, Linn mainly performs for adult audiences, where she feels less constrained and can explore stranger and darker territory.
Linn has had some version of Audrey Duck since she was 12 years old. Now 78, she says the puppet’s identity shifts depending on who’s watching.
With children, Audrey behaves like a child. With adults, she remains childlike but becomes sharper and blunter.
Her appearance remains the same, a youthful uniform of pigtail braids and an overall dress.
“She’s a pretty astute observer and doesn’t hesitate to call me on things,” Linn said.
Sometimes that includes calling out Linn’s own social conscience.
“Other puppets do important things like sell junk food to kids on television,” Audrey said, taking over Linn’s interview. “But I do videotapes where I have diabetes and cancer, and my parents die, and my best friend died, and my parents were depressed, and I’ve been homeless. I’ve had a terrible life.”
The pair share a rhythm developed over decades of practice, where the humor can be inappropriate, the subject matter overwhelmingly relevant and the experience wholly meta.
“People think that puppets are just for kids,” Linn said. “But it’s a really powerful medium that can be both very funny and very moving all at the same time.”
At their most recent adult show, the Puppet Showplace Theater noted that 50% of the audience were newcomers, said Maria Laird, the theater’s manager.
Although some adults are surprised at a puppet show geared toward them, Laird said, ultimately they walk away with a new understanding of live performance.
“I don’t think it’s a bad thing to be silly and childish,” Laird said. “Oftentimes in our very stressful world, it’s good to get back to the basics of play and communication.”
This story is part of a partnership between Brookline.News and the Boston University Department of Journalism.