Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry to Host Community Workshop for Mansfield Parade, 9/12-13

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will once again offer fall community puppet-building workshops with acclaimed Boston puppeteer Sara Peattie, to design and build life-size and over-life-size puppets for the Celebrate Mansfield Parade in downtown Storrs, Connecticut.

These free workshops will take place Saturday and Sunday, September 12 and 13 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day at the Ballard Institute workshop space in Storrs Center. Workshop participants will be invited to parade with their puppets as part of the Celebrate Mansfield Parade on Sunday, September 20 at noon (Line-up begins at 11:00 AM at Farrell Field near the Post Office). The Parade is a part of the 12th Annual Celebrate Mansfield Festival.

This year's puppet-building workshops will celebrate the 150th anniversary of Lewis Carroll's classic tale Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by designing and creating puppets based on the colorful and fantastic figures that populate Carroll's fanciful world: the White Rabbit, the Red Queen, the Cheshire Cat, the March Hare, and Alice herself--which character would you like to create?

Sara Peattie's dramatic puppet creations have been central features of community parades and pageants across the United States. Long a mainstay of Boston First Night festivities and the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in New York City, Sara Peattie's work--through her Boston-based Puppeteers Cooperative company and Puppet Free Library--combines community participation; simple, cheap, and practical puppet-building techniques; and a brilliant design sense to allow community members of all ages to take part in the age-old pleasures of participatory puppet performance in public spaces. Sara recently designed and directed the community puppet parade and pageant in Storrs Center as part of the 2015 Puppeteers of America National Puppetry Festival.

To participate in these free community puppet-building workshops with Sara Peattie, register by contacting the Ballard Institute at bimp@uconn.edu or 860 486 8580.

This community puppet project is sponsored by the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut and Mansfield Downtown Partnership, Inc.

For more about The Ballard Institute & Museum of Puppetry, visit bimp.uconn.edu. And for information on the 12th Annual Celebrate Mansfield Festival (Sunday, September 20), go to www.downtownstorrsfestival.org.

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