Ode to a chronicler of small-town America

Disfarmer, it turned out, was Mike Disfarmer, a small-town Arkansas portrait photographer, an eccentric misanthrope who nonetheless documented the life of his community for more than 40 years. Hurlin bought the book, and last year his curiosity gave birth to a strange and remarkable puppet show, “Disfarmer,’’ playing this weekend at the ICA as part of the Emerging America festival.

Hurlin is a theater artist working in puppetry; his last show was “Hiroshima Maiden.’’ He doesn’t call himself a puppeteer because he doesn’t actually maneuver the puppets himself. (He also teaches theater, puppetry, and dance at Sarah Lawrence College.)

The “tabletop’’ production style of “Disfarmer’’ puts the puppeteers in full view as they move the creations around the stage, and their maneuverings form a sort of hypnotic dance around the photographer’s life.

The real Disfarmer was a grumpy small-town oddball who snapped at his customers and sometimes insisted he was a foundling, delivered to his parents by a tornado. No one is quite sure why he changed his last name from Meyer to Disfarmer, Hurlin says, although clearly it was a break with his rural past. But from the early years of the 20th century to his death in 1959, Disfarmer photographed the citizens of Heber Springs, Ark., in his studio, marking significant milestones in their lives — even though he appeared not to like them very much.

Disfarmer is an enigma Hurlin has not resolved, nor does he want to.

“I said to [writer Sally Oswald] that I didn’t want the audience to leave feeling they knew Disfarmer any more than they did when they went in,’’ Hurlin said with a laugh. “It’s impossible to know who he was. Everyone we interviewed down in Heber Springs said, ‘Well, I knew Mike Disfarmer my whole life, and I can’t tell you anything about him.’ ’’

Instead, “Disfarmer’’ derives a sort of creepy beauty from its namesake’s mundane existence. A team of five onstage puppeteers handles the Disfarmer puppet and the props with which it interacts. Hurlin narrates, from a text written by Oswald, his former student. There’s a countryish live score by Dan Moses Schreier, and the production includes vintage recordings and projections of Disfarmer’s photographs.

“I think the pictures are imbued with nostalgia. . . . The piece to me is very sad because it’s a kind of elegy for the disappearance of rural America,’’ Hurlin says. “Every town had a photo studio when we were growing up. People had their photo taken when they graduated and when they married and had babies and everything, and now . . . it’s kind of a fact that rural America is going extinct. The way we structured the piece is that Disfarmer himself becomes emblematic of that.’’

A succession of Disfarmer puppets appears, each one smaller than the last, shrinking away.

“Where his studio was,’’ Hurlin notes,’’ is now a bank parking lot.’’

Isn’t it ironic that this elegy appears in Boston as part of the Emerging America festival? Hurlin laughs. “I hadn’t thought about that. The piece is really about an America that is vanishing, not an America that is emerging.’’

After Disfarmer’s death, a resident of Heber Springs had the presence of mind to preserve the photographer’s glass plate negatives. Some reached a local newspaper editor who restored them and eventually sent some to Modern Photography magazine. Before long there were books, exhibits, and scholarly study.

Hurlin started working on his piece in 2006. In Heber Springs, he visited Disfarmer’s grave and went to the courthouse to read the legal brief that allowed Disfarmer to change his name in 1939. He talked to locals who sat for Disfarmer portraits and to the newspaper editor who made them public.

Hurlin grew up in Antrim, N.H., and says, “The oddballs in my town were just part of the landscape, and they were taken care of in the same way the town green was taken care of. They were just there, and there was a certain affection for them, and the people of Heber Springs felt the same way about Disfarmer.’’

The community lives on in the photos.

“When you look at his body of work, people recur, and you get a picture of the entire community, which is sort of a beautiful thing,’’ Hurlin says. “What I find remarkable is how he could be disdainful of his community, and yet these people seem to be captured with such compassion.’’

Push Hurlin a little and he’ll admit he does have a few ideas about what was going on in Disfarmer’s head. In 1926, at age 42, Disfarmer lived through a tornado that reduced his family home to “kindling.’’ Hurlin says Disfarmer may have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder in ways that shaped the rest of his life.

“We also looked at his inability to form relationships with other people. . . . Looking at the photos that depicted relationships, did he look at them longingly? What did he see in them?’’ Hurlin says. “This was a guy who hated his town and yet he never left. So there’s a scene [in the play] where he tries to leave town and he can’t.’’

“Disfarmer’’ plays tonight and tomorrow at the ICA as part of the Emerging America festival (www.emergingamericafestival.org), which includes events at the American Repertory Theater and the Huntington Theatre Company. “Disfarmer’’ tickets are $25 at www.icaboston.org. For more information on Disfarmer, visit www.disfarmer.org.

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