Because of the settings and style of Gorey's work, many people have assumed he was British; in fact, he only left the U.S. once, for a visit to the Scottish Hebrides. In later years, he lived year-round in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, where he wrote and directed numerous evening-length entertainments, often featuring his own papier-mâché puppets, an ensemble known as Le Theatricule Stoique. The first of these productions, "Lost Shoelaces", premiered in Woods Hole, Massachusetts on August 13, 1987. The last was "The White Canoe: an Opera Seria for Hand Puppets", for which Gorey wrote the libretto, with a score by the composer Daniel James Wolf. Based on Thomas Moore's poem "The Lake of the Dismal Swamp", the opera was staged after Gorey's death and directed by his friend, neighbor, and longtime collaborator Carol Verburg, with a puppet stage made by his friends and neighbors, the noted set designers Herbert Senn and Helen Pond. In the early 1970s, Gorey wrote an unproduced screenplay for a silent film, "The Black Doll".