SAG HARBOR—“Vegetables’ Destiny,” which debuts June 26 at Goat on a Boat in Sag Harbor, isn’t your average puppet show. Sure, it’s packed full of G-rated humor (the giggle-inspiring refrain, “poop is important,” for instance) and plenty of easy-to-remember advice (think twice before throwing food in the trash). But, at a time when America’s growing gastronomic awareness inspires food-related best sellers, “Vegetables’ Destiny” is also a sort of manifesto.

It stars tap-dancing raindrops, an overripe tomato, a broccoli with integrity and a neurotic, stuttering carrot concerned she won’t be eaten. There are good bugs and bad bugs, like Killa Caterpilla, Mooks the Mole, Vinnie the Vole and the rest of the Creepy Crawly Posse. “Dirt” is a spoken-word homage to the foundation of all life. And, at the end of the show, the two overall-clad puppeteers come out from behind the set with an offering of produce, urging the audience to “help us fulfill the vegetables’ destiny.”

“A lot of parents say their kids won’t eat anything green,” says Liz Joyce, founder of Goat on a Boat, one of just 50 puppet theatres in the country, who regularly entertains dozens of boisterous children (and their parental accessories), and admits to playing with her food as a child. “You don’t want to humanize the vegetable but you have to tell the story. It was grown from a seed and it lived a whole season and we should give reverence to that.”

Joyce, who recently got chickens and expanded her vegetable garden, co-wrote the show with Juliana Nash, an Amagansett-based singer-songwriter, who helps book musical acts for Goat on a Boat and who produced her own music CD for children (“Build Me A Boat”). For the last year, the two have met for weekly practice-what-you-preach work sessions that included cooking dinner and sharing a bottle of wine. They scoured gardening books for words that rhymed with compost and pest and sprout, and handcrafted the “all-organic” papier-mâché and balsa wood puppets. Nash aimed for “a kind of Ethel Merman meets Aretha Franklin” in her role as the Sun (the star of the show, in more ways than one).

The show will play at this summer’s MidAtlantic Puppet Festival in Washington, DC, and there are plans for a DVD complete with songs on heirloom veggies, agribusiness and other topics Joyce and Nash didn’t get to cover. “It’s very rich and fertile material,” says Joyce, smiling at her own pun. “Seriously, it’s sweet to go out there with a plate of vegetables, because the kids cross that line. They participate in real food.”

For information visit goatonaboat.org.




KILLA CATERPILLA

Don’t push me
Don’t push me
I’m close to the
edge of the garden
gonna eat the hedge, y’all
I’m the Killa Caterpillar
Killa Caterpillar, y’all