Have Bunny Will Travel

We took "The Tale of Bunny Cotton-Tail" to Platteville on June 14 to perform outdoors -- another first for the traveling stage -- at the first-ever Bunny Cotton-Tail Day at the Mitchell-Rountree Stone Cottage. The cottage was the ancestral home of Laura Rountree Smith's family. She was the Platteville author who wrote the Bunny Cotton-Tail books. 

Here is our stage in the great outdoors and a photo of our Bunny Cotton-Tail meeting up with a real bunny, a Cinnamon, not a Cotton-Tail, at the petting zoo.

Pix from Puppet Playwriting Contest

We had a busy week last week. We performed the Three Winning Plays from the Puppet Playwriting Contest for the kids at the Cuba City Elementary School (The Round School) for their last day of school carnival. We did three performances. It was the first time we traveled with the new stage and we were pleased at how easy it was to take it down, load it up and set it up. We can set it all up in less than an hour. 

Here are some photos from the three shows:

Now we want you kids to be thinking of some really cool stories for next year's contest!

Hurray for the Day of Puppetry!

Chuck and Sandye and the 3 winners of the 4th annual Puppet Playwriting Contest in front of the new puppet stage. 

Tim Reed, a puppeteer from Milwaukee, performed "Planet Protectors," a high tech puppet hit.

Keep scrolling for more photos and a few words.....

Day of Puppetry Photos

First Day of Puppetry was a blast!

I finally started to relax and enjoy when Monica Leo started to perform her delightful "Willy the Woolly" show on Saturday morning.  Everyone was engaged and having fun -- including Chuck and me, after much preparation.  If you missed it, shame on you. It was a good time. Will we do it again next year? Probably, although we need to find some grant money. Anybody have some ideas? 

You'll see photos of puppet shows and the workshop, where Pam Corcoran taught kids to make either a wooly mammoth or a butterfly. There are lots of shots of the parade. What a gorgeous, perfect day. Only one photo of our 3 winning puppet playwrights and us on stage. We're going to be doing that show next week for Cuba City Elementary School's last day of school carnival, so we'll have to shoot a couple more photos to post.

Day of Puppetry Update!

Only 3 1/2 weeks to go before our first Day of Puppetry at the Hazel Green Opera House.

Here, as promised, is the news of our Puppet Playwriting Contest winners AND the finalized schedule of events.

Contest Winners

We have 3 winners -- in no particular order.

Eli Berthel -- "3 Rabbits" . We couldn't resist this one because we already had rabbits from our recent "Tale of Bunny Cotton-Tail."

McKenna Michels -- "The Pirate Who Wanted Treasure." McKenna, whose school made a special trip last year to see last year's winning plays, was inspired by that theme of "Pirates & Mermaids."

Joshua Bloom -- "The Tale of the Green Serpent," an old-fashioned tale of a knight in shining armor who sets out to rescue a damsel in distress.

Eli and McKenna are from Bellevue, Iowa. Joshua is from Platteville.

We had a good assortment of entries this year, including from Cuba City and Bloomington.

And we are working hard on the show as well as on organizing the Day of Puppetry -- with help from our Fever River Puppeteers board members, our friends in the Wisconsin Puppetry Guild and others.

DAY OF PUPPETRY SCHEDULE

Opera House

9-10 a.m. - Meet & greet.  Bake sale w/ coffee & juice by the St. Francis Council of Church Women

10 a.m. - "The Woolly Mammoth," by the Eulenspiegel Puppets, West Liberty, Iowa

UMC Hall (2 short blocks south of HGOH)

11 a.m. - Make & Take Puppet workshop by Pam Corcoran, Stevens Point, Wis. (pre-registration is recommended by calling 608-759-4425, to assure that enough materials are available. Otherwise, first-come, first-served. Parental help is also recommended.)

Noon - Lunch. Concessions by local 4-H group.

Main Street in front of HGOH (blocked off)

1 p.m. - Puppet parade. Giant puppets and medium-sized puppets in a street fair atmosphere. (Rain is simply not an option.)

Opera House

2 p.m. - "Planet Protectors," by Tim Reed, of Milwaukee

Afternoon snack concessions by 4-H group

3 p.m. - "4th Annual Puppet Playwriting Contest Winners" by Fever River Puppeteers

We estimate the festival will end by 3:30 or 3:45.

there will be no set fee for performances and workshop. But freewill donations will be gratefully accepted to help offset the cost of advertising, materials, etc. The festival is being made possible in part by grants from the Grant County Safe & Stable Families and the Wisconsin Puppetry Guild.

Concessions, of course, will be available for prices to be set by the concessionaires.

 

Our aim is to offer a family fun day at low cost, especially for families who are experiencing these tough economic times. And of course, we hope everyone will fall in love with puppets, because that's what we're all about.

 

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!