SOUTHFIELD — After 19 years In the Motor City, PuppetArt Theatre has decided to call the Center of it All home.

The group recently moved into office space at 24293 Telegraph Road. According to founder Igor Gozman, the nonprofit group got “squeezed out” of downtown Detroit.

“The question was where to go. It was a very painful several months, and we simply couldn’t find a place we could afford. We had to say goodbye to this idea of the resident theater, because it wasn’t achievable,” he said. “When we were shown this place, the search was over.”

The main attraction of the new space on Telegraph, Gozman said, was that it’s literally in the Center of It All, with access to many metro Detroit communities.

“When I came here and saw the place, I just had a feeling we could put a little theater here eventually,” he said.

Gozman said the group began in 1990, when he and two other artists trained in Europe — Luda Mikheyenko and Irina Baranovskaya — met and explored their common love of puppetry.

In 1995, they founded the American Russian Theatre, which was renamed PuppetArt in 1999.

Now the group offers a repertoire of 11 productions based on fairytales and folktales from around the world. The group’s performances feature string — or marionette — puppets, along with hand, rod, shadow and floor-tabletop puppets.

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