By NANCY CHURNIN

Kathy Burks bought her children puppetry lessons when Douglass was 12 and Becky was 9, never suspecting that she, too, would fall under the spell of the elaborate, 1930s marionettes on which they learned their craft.

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Show info: Kathy Burks' The Nutcracker

Now, 34 years later, she and her grown children are enchanting new generations through the Kathy Burks Theatre of Puppetry Arts, where 500 puppets built by the Burks family and their longtime collaborators perform in a company that includes 1,500 original Sue Hastings marionettes that Ms. Burks bought from the woman who taught them puppetry so long ago.

The company's 14-year-old production of The Nutcracker opens Saturday and runs through Dec. 23 at the Dallas Children's Theater's Rosewood Center for Family Arts.

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Video: Puppeteers discuss their art.

While many theater artists revel in the bonds they forge with their theater families, Ms. Burks says it is especially sweet when your theater and actual families are one.

"In every show that's produced, the cast and production group hate to say goodbye after the show," says Ms. Burks, 71. "I've never had to say goodbye."

It's sweet, too, that she is surrounded by the most personal of mementos. Not only does she see the puppets they have crafted together every day, but she also has audiotapes dating to when her children and their cousin, Sally Fiorello, were young and did the voices.

Douglass Burks voices Tchaikovsky, who introduces the show in The Nutcracker, explaining what inspired him to write his famous ballet, while Ms. Fiorello narrates and voices Clara. Ms. Burks voices a puppet puppeteer, who sets the stage and explains the tricks of the trade (such as how the black-robed puppeteers seem invisible when they step away from the stream of light in which the puppets perform).

Afterward, Clara meets the Nutcracker, the Mouse King and the Prince in a shortened version of the classic story that includes a fanciful dance of puppets in which a poodle performs, a genie displays the inside of his bottle and a toy soldier loses his head (and has fun playing with it until the head finds its body again).

When the 20 Nutcracker puppets are not onstage, they reside with their buddies in their very own space at the Dallas Children's Theater. Twenty-four years ago, when DCT executive artistic director Robyn Flatt was trying to get the Dallas Children's Theater started with all of $500 (far short of the cost of a theater space), Ms. Burks allowed her to share the two rooms she rented at Withers Elementary School in northwest Dallas.

After Ms. Flatt raised more than $8 million to purchase, renovate and open the doors of what became the Rosewood Center for Family Arts four years ago, she returned the favor in style. Ms. Burks' puppets, which had been stored in her home, now have a special room at the Rosewood.

Ms. Burks has been busy spiffing up her wooden charges in time for The Nutcracker opening with the help of her kids and collaborators, including composer B. Wolf (who adapted the script) and puppeteer Patricia Long. And there's so much to do: Clara's golden hair needs to be rolled, chips in the stars' faces require fresh paint, costumes must be steamed, the Nutcracker's wild white mane demands brushing. Ah, that Nutcracker, you never know when he's going to loosen his grip on his sword, which makes Ms. Long, who operates him, fight the Mouse King very carefully.

"The Nutcracker has a mind of his own," Douglass Burks says, shooting the big, red puppet a warning look as it lies oh-so-innocently on a backstage table, awaiting rehearsal.

But Ms. Burks could not be happier to have spent all these years with that persnickety puppet and his pals, whom she credits with keeping her loved ones close and her brain percolating in a magical world where anything is possible, except, it seems, retiring.

"If I retired, what would I do?" she says. "I love it. I still remember when I bought most of the Sue Hastings collection, sight unseen. I would open the boxes and it was like Christmas every day as we unwrapped Popeye and Snow White and the seven dwarfs. It was fun getting to know the puppets so well, and it was exciting as we began to write our own plays. It still is."

Want to get into the spirit of the holidays? Bring a new, unwrapped toy to a performance of The Nutcracker (or to the theater Mondays through Fridays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.). The toys will be given to the children of the Vickery Meadow neighborhood as part of the Dallas Children's Theater and Vickery Meadow Improvement District toy drive that will continue through Dec. 16.