Just Imagine: Margaret Lindman and the Lindman Marionettes
A Chicago native, Margaret Rohner Lindman came to Lake Bluff about 1948, where during the summers she taught preschool at the Lake Bluff Children’s Home. In the 1950s she taught at Lake Bluff East School and Lake Bluff Middle School. She found it natural to merge her training in education with her background in theater, drawing on childhood elocution lessons and college drama experience to create theatrical lessons for her students.
It was during this period that Margaret, her husband Richard Lindman, and her sister Mary Griffith formed the Lindman Marionettes. The troupe created over 200 marionettes and hand puppets through the years. Richard Lindman, and engineer, did most of the rough cutting of the puppets, many of which were made of basswood, as well as carving and assembly. Margaret would also carve and paint the puppets’ faces.
She and Mary would write plays for children and then act out the performances, serving as both characters and puppeteers. Richard would build the sets and help with the stage crew, lighting and sound. Many of the plays were based on classic children’s stories, fairy tales, and poems, and often they incorporated audience participation.
The Lindman Marionettes often performed at Ravinia’s Murray Theater, and each year at the Miracle of Books Fair at the Museum of Science and Industry.
These plays proved popular enough that by the early 1960s, Margaret Lindman had her own television show. “Just Imagine” aired on WTTW, Chicago’s Channel 11, every Tuesday at 4:45 p.m. from 1962 to 1964. The program recorded at 6 a.m. at the Museum of Science and Industry. In the afternoon the neighborhood children would gather at the Lindman house to watch it with the “stars.”
After “Just Imagine’s” run ended, Margaret Lindman continued to teach. She received a Ph.D. from Loyola and served as an advisory editor for United Educators publications. She became a professor of education at Northeastern Illinois University where she was involved in race desegregation and curriculum development. She retired in 1994.
