Vit Hoyrejs’s devil marionette, the first puppet the founder of New York’s Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre ever owned, has a communist government exit visa stamped on its feet. Two, actually – one on the bottom of the left foot and one of the bottom of the right, which is in fact a hoof.

“It was a permit from the National Gallery in Prague certifying that, as a work of art, he could leave,” said the 6-foot-4-inch Mr. Hoyrejs in slow, steady tones, with a hint of dust-dry wit. This smiling, horned menace plays Mephistopheles in the company’s “Faust.” The classic tale of temptation is the ur-text of the centuries-old tradition of Czech puppet theater – a legacy Mr. Hoyrejs has almost single-handedly resurrected in America since founding his troupe in 1989. The Bohemian Beelzebub is a fascinatingly repulsive figure, intricately carved as if to reveal every muscle and sinew of his hook-nosed, jug-eared, pot-bellied and – except for a cape – utterly naked self.

“I had one girl come to me after a show,” murmured Mr. Hoyrejs.” She said ‘You know, your devil could be arrested for indecent exposure.'”

Mr. Hoyrejs may very well have an exit visa tattooed on his sole, too. (I didn’t ask him to remove his shoes.) Like the devil, he slipped over the border of then communist Czechoslovakia, returning only after the Velvet Revolution padded the way back. Born in Prague, he bolted in 1978, settling first in Italy, then France, finally reaching New York City on a refugee visa.

“I was in love with English and wanted to go to an English-speaking country,” he said. “The United States turned out to be more realistic, because I wanted to do theater and that would have been much harder in England with an accent.”

Going AWOL came with a price: The Czech government confiscated his portion of the family estate. “Very scary to have a communist government own one-sixth of your house,” he observed.

He has since been to Prague often, visiting about once a year with his entourage of wooden and flesh-and-blood actors (who frequently interact on stage). Recently they performed a truncated puppet version of “Hamlet” at Prague Castle, and did not have to skimp on special effects. “For the performance, our puppets walked on the ramparts,” he told. “They were real ramparts.”

As puppet makers are scarce in these parts, Mr. Hoyrejs will occasionally order ahead for a new player prior to flying to Prague. “I e-mail in the order and they try to have it ready when I go there. Usually, the carver is at the airport still painting.”

Aside from his trusty devil and a couple of others, Mr. Hoyrejs inherited the core of his stringed ensemble quite by accident. Upon arriving in New York 25 years ago, he settled in Little Czechoslovakia, an enclave around 72nd Street from York to Third Avenue that was a shadow of itself then and has faded into near nothingness since. The window of his sublet looked out on the Jan Hus Presbyterian Church, named after the Czech priest and martyr who was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1416. In the mid-1980s, following a variety of theatrical pursuits, he performed a program of Czech puppet plays at the church, which has a stage in its basement.

At the event, Rosa Luchart, the building’s custodian, and one of the congregation’s last Czech ladies, gave out that the church once hosted a puppet theater. “They must still be here,” Mr. Hoyrejs recalled her saying, vaguely.

They were. In the attic, he found 24-plus marionettes ranging from 22 to 24 inches tall, a few more than 150 years old; and 45 smaller toy marionettes from the 1920s. Some had been carved by the dynastic Czech puppet-making family of Sychrovskys ‘, and possibly used by the Kopeckys ‘, a legendary family of puppeteers.

The marionettes struck a chord. Mr. Hoyrejs’s mother had had her own puppet theatre as a child. Mr. Hoyrejs possesses it still; 18 inches high and a little worse for wear, it sits in the company’s cluttered, sunlight-deprived Dumbo offices, guarded by dozens of dangling soldiers, princesses, and rabbis.

Some restringing and a whole lot of research later, the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre was in business, launching its name with – what else – “Faust.”

In 1991, a talent agent who specialized in school assembly tours caught Mr. Hoyrejs’s act in Staten Island, where the puppeteer was a last-minute replacement for another entertainer. “A ’42nd Street’ kind of story,” drawled Mr. Hoyrejs through his graying goatee. The agent exhorted, “More puppets!” And so, following decades in a musty church attic, the devil, Dr. Faustus and their friends shook off the dust and took a road trip – 151 shows in three and half months.

“I got to see the country in an incredible way,” he recalled. “It was me and several puppets and three Czech folk tales. One was about a water spirit – very popular with the Indian tribes. I had a lot of problems with the devil out in the Bible Belt, however. Some religions were just not inclined to talk about or show the devil, unlike the Europeans. Several principals would tell me, ‘We just don’t have the folk tradition.'”

Out here in the decadent blue state of New York, however, folks not only want to see his clovenness, they want to buy him and take him home. A goodly portion of the company’s livelihood is won through the sale of marionettes, which are available for order at www.czechmarionettes.org, as well as at the Grand Central Terminal Holiday Fair, which sets up shop at Vanderbilt Hall on November 23.

Another place where you wouldn’t expect to find short, linden-wood representations of kings, witches, and Kaysparek – the Czech version of mischief-maker Punch – is the Memorial Arch at Grand Army Plaza. Over the summer, the company, along with Puppeteers Cooperative, set up a puppet library in the eastern pillar of the Parks Department-controlled monument. People can attend by appointment (call 718-853-7350); the plan is to have fixed hours by next year. The arch is also where the theater plans to stage its next new show, “Bass Saxophone,” based on a novel by Josef Skvorecky, set to run April 28-May 15, 2005. For those who cannot wait until spring, the company will present “The Lights of Hanukkah” at the Jewish Memorial Museum on December 12.

But the city has always been good to the company; last year, the New York Public Library asked for 30 shows within four months.

“They like me a lot,” said Mr. Hoyrejs, “because I’m willing to go to the Bronx and Staten Island.”