September Update

The top photo is our recent program at Dubuque's Voices from the Warehouse art exhibit.

The middle photo is a scene from "The Cloud Princess," an African fairy tale.

The bottom photo is from the Labor Day parade. Chuck is inside the giant Witch Hazel Green and 2 of our granddaughters walked along throwing candy to the kids while I carried the big Pinocchio.

Whew! With our Halloween shows only a month away, I thought I'd better post a quick update.

We're working on:

"Frankie's Halloween Story"

11 a.m. & 2 p.m. Sat. Oct. 24

2 p.m. Sun. Oct. 25

AND 2 p.m. Sat. Oct 31

More about that in a future post!

Meanwhile, I must tell you all that our Labor Day weekend shows were a rousing success, with wonderful crowds -- we pretty much had a full house on Sunday, which forced us to set up some more chairs at the last minute. That's a problem we love to have!

No one complained that we raised the ticket prices by $1 at the last minute. Thanks!

Our 5th anniversary in the opera house passed with little fanfare. But then last year, we made a big deal out of Labor Day being our 15th anniversary in puppetry and the 5th Labor Day in our wonderful home. Pretty soon we'll be marking another special milestone -- more about that later!

While we practiced "3 Bears etc." for that weekend, we were also furiously working on "The Cloud Princess" on our new handpuppet/shadow puppet stage. That brand new show was ready to roll the next weekend at the Bell Tower Theater in Dubuque -- a paying gig!

We were pretty nervous about our debut there with a "world premier," but all went fairly smoothly (except that the shadow puppet Cloud King's arm fell off which just about gave us a heart attack. Hopefully, we covered it up quickly).

Anyway, the Bell Tower folks loved it and have invited us back next fall to do another show.

"The Cloud Princess" is available to travel, as is our spring show, "The Tale of Bunny Cotton-Tail."

As if THAT wasn't enough to keep up busy!!!-- The NEXT weekend, we did a little marionette show, "Marionette All-Stars" at Dubuque's Voices from the Warehouse with a storyboarding workshop to follow. That was kind of a last-minute gig that was on a freewill donation basis. A small but enthusiastic crowd attended -- many of whom have not been to the opera house. So maybe we made a few converts.

This crazy month isn't over yet! This weekend, we travel to West Liberty, Iowa, to be part of the Eulenspiegel Puppets' Children's Festival. Monica Leo (who performed "Willy the Woolly" at our Day of Puppetry) asked us to lead the puppet parade that will cap off a day of puppet shows. it's all outdoors and last year it was gorgeous. This year there's a chance of rain. We're bring the Chinese dragon and the 6-segment caterpillar and a few other creatures.