Find a spot high enough in the Jarvis Conservatory’s balcony, and Luman Coad’s face is visible within the puppeteer’s stage below, where his face tenses with concentration and morphs into the expressions his silent puppets are meant to convey.

It’s the Friday evening show of the 11th annual Puppet Festival and Workshop at Jarvis Conservatory, and Coad is performing “Harlequin’s Cloak,” an original Commedia dell’arte Pantomime.

“The Commedia dell’Arte (play of professional artists) started about 500 years ago in Italy as a sort of bawdy street theater for the lower classes,” said Coad, “but it was cleaned up as it became more popular, and it is actually the basis of the modern sitcom.”

Coad authored his current show, “Harlequin’s Cloak,” after being inspired by a Commedia dell’Arte performance at Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. The pantomime features the traditional Commedia dell’Arte characters Harlequin, Columbine, Pantalone, El Capitano, Pierrot and one Coad invented called Frau Franken, because he says he couldn’t find anything like her in the original material.

Of the original traveling and unscripted performances that existed in 15th century Italy, Coad can name a number of comparable descendants like Molièr’s “The Miser” and “The School for Wives,” Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” Rostand’s “Cyrano de Bergerac,” and even the modern day television show “The Simpsons.”

The intricate tapestries, puppets and costumes, stage and folding ornamental peacock that adorns it, are all Coad’s creations, who began his career while studying children’s theatre at San Francisco State University and was director of the puppet theatre at Children’s Fairyland in Oakland.

As he began to gain recognition in the world of puppetry, Coad moved to Vancouver and founded Coad Canada Puppets with his wife, Arlyn, where he later organized and participated in many puppetry festivals, traveling performances and worked on films, such as “Being John Malkovich.”

Coad has been in the industry for 47 years.

Since 1999, Coad has been performing the tasks for the Coad Canada Puppets troupe solo, since Arlyn Coad, designer, co-author, co-director, and wife died from leukemia.

Long time friend to Coad, and organizer of the festival at Jarvis Conservatory, Peter Allen, started off the show with a Parasol Puppets performance called “Circus.” Popular with the children, and less full of the adult themes of love and betrayal, Allen’s performance evoked more the mental image of  puppets.

“The whole idea started about 15 years ago when we met Jim Jarvis in Hawaii during one of our performance,” said Debby Lutzky-Allen, co-founder of Parasol Puppets, “he wanted to bring puppeteers to the conservatory for a festival.”

The Jarvis Conservatory hosts the puppet festival annually, featuring two shows and a hands-on children’s workshop that reveals the backstage secrets of the trade and an opportunity to create their own puppet.