Jeff Whitty didn’t start out as a puppet kind of guy. As a young boy growing up in Coos Bay, Ore., the fifth of six children, Whitty was puppet-deprived, he jokes, saying he was more obsessed with ...

You never know what you’ll see when you step into the streets of New York City—but even by those standards, bumping into a donkey, a mermaid and a god of death in quick succession is unusual. All of ...