Day 3 of Ronnie Burketts challenge: In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre. In 1995, after 20 years of running our puppet theatre out of our homes and rehearsing shows that were too big for my living room in a local church basement, we bought a storefront in West Liberty, Iowa, a tiny town nearby. All of a sudden we realized the opportunities and obligations of being part of a community. We realized we wanted to contribute and make a mark. We looked north at what Heart of the Beast was doing and decided we wanted to do our small town version of the kinds of hands-on community outreach they were doing. We saw the community workshops they organized to get scores of people involved with their annual May Day parade and decided to start by inviting locals to help us make puppets for the County Fair parade. A few years later we added our own festival, the West Liberty Childrens Festival, and then began organizing annual community puppet shows with local residents (including 2 mayors, a chief of police, a city manager, a school superintendent, etc) as puppeteers. We might never have thought of these ideas without the stellar example of our neighbors to the north. Heart of the Beast has gorgeous visuals, exciting, cutting-edge playwriting, and a wonderful theater, but the thing I find most inspiring is the way they open their doors and their hearts to their community, letting everyone in on the planning and execution, and facilitating creativity in one and all. And now I pass the challenge on to you, Camilla Henneman!
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 21:49:06 +0000