Puppets have been a staple of mainstream entertainment from Howdy Doody in the 1950s to Mr. Roger’s puppets in the ‘60s and ‘70s to Jim Hensen’s creations, which exploded in the ‘70s and fascinate children and adults to this day.

Then there was the puppeteer who finds a small portal that leads into the mind of actor John Malkovich in the 1999 film “Being John Malkovich.”

What you don’t often see are the more traditional puppets, that is unless you live on Lopez and attend the Carter Family Puppet Show.

“Puppet theater has been around for 100s of years,” said Stephen Carter. “It always seems on the verge of dying off, but it always pops back again.”

The Northwest Puppet Center begins its fourth season of puppet shows for all ages on Lopez Island with “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” on Saturday, Sept. 3 at 2 p.m. at the Lopez Center for Community and the Arts.

The Carter Family brings a new twist to this old folk tale made famous by Mickey Mouse in  “Fantasia” by casting the Italian clown Pulcinella as the enthusiastic but inept apprentice.

The performance will be outdoors if sunny and indoors if rainy.

Stephen and Chris Carter, founders of the puppet center, have been professional puppeteers since 1976.

The Carters performed their first puppet show on Lopez about 40 years ago and as young puppeteers they often performed at the library and high school.

Stephen Carter said he never imagined that puppetry would be his profession, but he was raised in a family that cultivated “artistic expression.”

In high school and college, he studied everything from wood carving to acting, while his wife Chris focused on dance study.

“I came around to the fact that you can put everything together with puppets: acting, painting, carving, music,” said Stephen Carter.

During those early years, the Carters combined so many different art forms in one show that, “Our work defied description it was so off the map,” Stephen Carter said.

The Carters have trained with master puppeteers in Romania, Sicily, and China and have performed at National and World Puppet Festivals from Scotland to Uzbekistan.

Stephen Carter received the Fulbright Award for puppetry studies in 1984 and holds a postgraduate degree from the Institute of Theater and Cinema in Bucharest, Romania.

He recalls the theater in Bucharest as a very sophisticated puppet theater with over 80 people on staff.

“It was a whole different model,” said Stephen Carter. “Very institutionalized, whereas in the West puppets shows are done by solo artists or by a family.”

The Carters’ son and daughter (son Dmitri is now the director of the puppet center) and three grandchildren are involved in the productions.

The performing troupe sometimes includes the whole family or just Stephen and Chris Carter.

“Not all couples can do it,” he said about working with his wife and kids. “It keeps you closer and you spend a lot of time together and when our kids were teenagers, we did a lot of traveling and they got to see the world and the shows taught them responsibility.”

The Carters are especially known for their mastery and preservation of the traditional Sicilian marionette theater known as Opera dei Pupi.

They also perform puppet operas at least once a year in Seattle. One of their specialities is preserving the tradition of improv.

But how does one improvise within a box?

“Puppeteers are accustomed to channeling acting through our hands and our voices,” said Stephen Carter. “We’re hyper aware of each other. It’s like a jazz group performing standard rift motifs in a loose structure and bouncing off each other and responding to the audience dynamic.”

At this year’s San Juan County fair, children watched with wonder and amazement as the puppet characters ranging from a crocodile to a butterfly girl to a boy, all bounding through various scenes from the rooftops of Paris to the underground sewers of the city.

You could almost imagine yourself in 19th Century Italy before internet, TV, radio and iphones captured our attention.

Quinn Steckler, age 10, has been to at least 10 Carter Family puppet performances and the upcoming show is one of his favorite productions.

“They make really good puppets and do good imitations for the puppets,” said Quinn. “And they’re really funny.”

Tickets for the “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” are available in advance at Blossom Organic Grocery and Ilsehaven Bookstore and at the door.

For more info, visit www.nwpuppet.org.