Millie Patterson uses a variety of puppet styles including rod puppets, mouth puppets and marionettes to tell traditional fairy tales. You will find themes of spinning and weaving in her shows that often begin with a demonstration of the spinning wheel or drop spindle. Her repertoire includes Rumpelstiltskin, Sleeping Beauty, Mother Holly, A Spider’s Tale and the Chinese fairy tale, The Weaving of a Dream.

Patterson joined the Marie Hitchcock Puppet Theater performer’s team in 2000. Her other theater experience is also in the variety arts. She performed with an avant-garde performance art group, RC22, in Detroit, Michigan in the 1980’s and was a founding member of The Silent Treatment pantomime troupe in Los Angeles in the 1970’s.

Patterson graduated from UCLA in 1972. Later she studied theater arts and completed teacher training at CSULB. She completed advanced training in pantomime at the Richmond Shepard Mime Institute in Hollywood, CA. She continues to study art at Mira Costa Community College.

Patterson makes her own puppets, sets and props. When she isn’t working with puppets she works as a substitute teacher in Oceanside, CA where she lives with her husband, Alan, and two daughters, Alison and Noelle. She is secretary for San Diego’s Balboa Park Puppet Guild and a member of Puppeteers of America, the Antique Gas and Steam Engine Museum Weavers, Palomar Handweaver’s Guild and is a Girl Scout leader.