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here are a few obstacles to staging “Issun Boshi,” the Japanese version of the Tom Thumb story.?

For starters, where do you find an actor the size of a thumb, or at least a rat large enough to make an actor seated on its back appear thumb-sized??The answer: Build a bigger rat.?Utah State University’s theater department decided to do just that, along with other enormous puppets/marionettes, to “act” along with actors in the production of “Issun Bosh: Tom Thumb,” opening Tuesday at the Morgan Theater in USU’s Chase Fine Arts Center.?Dennis Hassan, the school’s set designer, has crafted puppets large and small, which are manipulated by one to six puppeteers. Several of Hassan’s creations are enormous, at least one filling the entire stage with extended arms and legs with a span of about 30 feet.?Other marionettes are small, like the digit-sized Issun, who is manipulated by a larger Issun, a human who takes over acting duties when the character is with creatures closer to his own size, say a water sprite or an angry, karate-chopping rat.?Still following this??”With the rat, there is a person that is inside, running the front arms of the rat, and someone operating the mouth, and someone operating the back, so the rat can stand up, and it looks like a race car popping a wheelie,” said Hassan, 43, of Logan. ?”There are a couple other people working the legs, for karate kicks, and the rat can jump through the air for the kind of flying kicks they do in ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.’ It works really well.”?And the human incarnation of Issun, Jason West, is a gymnast, so expect a good show from him as well. A coy fish outsizes the rat, and the water sprite dwarfs them both.?”Issun Boshi” tells the story of a tiny would-be samurai, who vows to save the emperor from a giant demon that has taken over Japan’s capital city. Few believe a tiny man can accomplish the feat, but then, they don’t know the power of determination. ?The puppets are made of metal, wood and fabric. Hassan used a sabbatical last year to study puppets in Prague, in the Czech Republic.?”Prague is really known for puppetry, with shops in every other building downtown,” he said. “I learned to do marionettes from the masters, and went to different puppet shows every night. ?”People there have a history of expressing themselves through puppets. It grew during the Communist regime, when people couldn’t speak freely, but they could hide a story within a puppet show.” ?Hassan said building large puppets seemed a natural extension of set design, but it gave him new insight into acting as well.?”You learn that the puppet’s acting is only as good as the acting of the people moving it,” Hassan said. “But in other ways, puppets are far less limited than human actors. Puppets can be 30 feet tall, and they can fly easily, and have different ways to move around the room. But at the same time, puppets can show emotion, cry and feel heartbreak. I’ve always been intrigued with it.”?Hassan’s puppets were built by students who spent months welding, carving and sewing, as part of a puppetry course.?”After the puppets were built, rehearsals could start,” Hassan said, with a laugh.?”This show is something very different,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it onstage, and I’ve seen a lot of theater.”?