The Ballard Institute Presents An Online Women's Suffrage Puppet Pageant

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will present a free online Women's Suffrage Puppet Pageant on Facebook Live as part of the reimagined 17th annual Celebrate Mansfield Festival on Saturday, Sept. 26 at 4 p.m. ET on Facebook Live (facebook.com/BallardInstitute). The pageant will feature toy theater works created by amateur and professional puppeteers from around the world.

The theme for this year's Ballard Institute community pageant for the Celebrate Mansfield Festival is a celebration of the women's suffrage movement. The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment in the United States, which guarantees and protects women's constitutional right to vote. The Ballard Institute will use this anniversary to acknowledge the complex history of the women's suffrage movement, and the leadership of women of color, Native women, working-class women, and immigrant women in the struggle for suffrage; as well as the movement's intersections with abolitionism and other movements. To honor this milestone we will celebrate women's suffrage heroes from around the world, including Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, Jovita Idár, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Mai Ziadeh, and Luisa Capetillo, among others, noting the successes of the movement, and also its challenges in the face of racism and forces opposed to suffrage.

All workshop participants will perform their short works (three to five minutes long) as part of the pageant, which will be streamed live on the Ballard Institute's Facebook page (facebook.com/BallardInstitute) on Saturday, Sept. 26 at 4 p.m. ET and will be available afterwards on both the Ballard Institute's Facebook page and YouTube channel (youtube.com/channel/UC3VSthEDnYS6ZjOwzT1DnTg).

This community puppet project is sponsored by the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut and the Mansfield Downtown Partnership, Inc. For more information about the 17th Annual Celebrate Mansfield Festival, visit downtownstorrsfestival.org.

The Mansfield Downtown Partnership is an independent, non-profit organization comprised of the Town of Mansfield, the University of Connecticut, and individual business members and residents. The Partnership seeks to foster the continued development, management, and promotion of Downtown Storrs. For more information about the Partnership, visit mansfieldmdp.org.
bimp.uconn.edu/2020/09/18/womens-suffrage-pageant-2/ .