Harry took Maia to puppet day at the Folk Art Center a little over a month ago. They saw a couple of puppet shows and made/decorated simple puppets between shows. Maia didn't stop talking about it afterwards. She loved the puppet shows! Really loved them. Vasalisa (one of the puppets, pictured above) was a daily topic of conversation for a while.
Since then she's seen two other puppet shows--one at the library and one at Wildacres with Hobey Ford. The second was a private retreat for kids and their parents, but Harry talked his way in somehow and we all saw the show.
Hobey Ford was amazing. I was mesmerized and I'm not even his target audience. Everyone loved him from the 2 year olds to the older folks. He's truly a master of his medium and his puppets (all handmade by him) are wonderful, from his little peepers to his large foam whales.
It helped that his show was about animals--the cycle of life with a caterpillar metamorphosing to a chrysalis to a butterfly and a tadpole changing to a frog, etc. The whole thing was done to dreamy new age music -- lots of mime and acting, no words -- and was absolutely magical.
For those of you in the Asheville area, Hobey will be doing his show again (for the public this time) at the Weaverville Public Library on Thursday, June 26th at 10:30am and 12noon and then at Pack Library on Thursday, July 31st at 10:30am. Go and see his show. He's awesome.
For the rest of you, here's Hobey's tour schedule. It looks like he mostly plays around the southeast, with lots of shows in North Carolina and Louisiana.Â
Since Maia is so into puppet shows right now, I need to explore this a bit more. It's not an area that I have ever looked into (or really been interested in) in the past. But now we are definitely seeking out puppet shows. I may even try to make a simple home puppet theatre for Maia to play with. There's a cloth doorway theater in Amy Karol's book that looks easy to sew up. As for puppets, we have a few finger puppets, but that's all. Maia does a lot of pretend play with her dolls and animals now, so I imagine puppet play might just be an extension of that. I'll keep you posted...
Are your kids into puppets?
Photo credit: None of these photos are mine, by the way. Vasalisa (at the top) is from Pamela O'Connor Puppets website and the rest are from Hobey Ford's website.
