Day of Puppetry Planned

Hold onto your sockpuppets! This is going to be great.

Thanks to our friends in the Wisconsin Puppetry Guild, this year we will expand the performance of our annual Puppet Playwriting Contest to an entire-- 

ta da:

Day of Puppetry

9:30-3:30 (approx.) Saturday May 30

Save the date. Make plans. It's going to be great.

Events will be in the opera house as well as in the Methodist Church hall that is a block away.

Right now it looks like we'll use the church hall for the puppetmaking workshop as well as lunchtime concessions. We've also got village permission to block off the street in front of the opera house for a mid-day parade.

Guest performers will be Monica Leo's Eulenspiegel Puppets presenting "The Woolly Mammoth." Monica's puppet company is in West Liberty, Iowa, and she is originally from Dubuque. 

Another guest, Pam Corcoran, of Stevens Point, Wis., is in charge of the make-and-take workshop which will be a woolly mammoth puppet. 

Our other guest performer is Tim Reed, a puppeteer from Milwaukee, whose parents were professional puppeteers for 50 years. His show is called 'Planet Protectors'. Here is the YouTube link to see a clip from this show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEo8j5LmY7c

Playwriting Contest Winners

I have sent out letters to our 3 winners this year and as soon as they respond with copies of their school photos, I will announce them. 

We had the most entries ever this year and that made it pleasantly hard to choose the winner(s). But I started working on the script as soon as we finished the bunny show. We will be performing the 4th edition of the contest winners at the tail end of the day of puppetry and we'll be using our new two-tiered handpuppet stage.

The Best Part 

I forgot to tell you that thanks to donations from the Grant County Safe & Stable Families, admission to the contest performance is free and thanks to a donation from the Wisconsin Puppetry Guild, all other events at the festival will be FREEWILL DONATION. That means it is affordable for everyone.  You just pay what you can.  Considering the state of the economy and the number of people who have lost their jobs lately, we wanted to offer a family event that everyone can afford. Any donations received will be used to jumpstart a similar event next year.

There will be more news to come as we finalize plans. (We might even have a puppet-related garageless garage sale.) If anyone has any thoughts, hopes, ideas or comments, send them along.

Keep checking this blog for updates!