Puppets coming to Troy to tell a story
By Kyle McClellan The Western News
A walrus, pigeon and Poporockalysis—a composite creature comprising one-third zebra, one-third lion and one-third giraffe, and surely misspelled here—are visiting Troy, May 19, for the Puppet Project Extravaganza. They are coming to tell a story.
The story of Troy, presented through the fresh perspectives of 230 Morrison Elementary students, will be grand, colorful and diverse. It will be coyotes, beavers and horses. It will be turkeys, chipmunks and lizards. It will be ravens, robins and ospreys. Oh, and the mosquitoes will be there, of course.
And it will be local. Look and listen for familiar places: Kootenai Drug, the bank, the bowling alley, Roosevelt Park and Jack's Cafe, among others. But don't look for them the way you would on Highway 2.
Look for imagination on the individual level transformed into community-wide engagement. Look for thoughts and ideas vivified into moving and breathing cardboard figures. But don't look for perfection.
That's art, cacophonous and simultaneously revealing. That's the fulfillment for the artist leading the effort. Her name is Beth Nixon. She is an artist-in-residence from Philadelphia and is here for five weeks helping Troy rediscover itself from a new angle.
She must provide parameters and implement imaginative guidelines for free-thinking first graders.
"That part has been really hard. I don't feel like I got that down yet at all," Nixon said. "Certain ideas stick out and that's what we latch onto, but I don't know if it's the most democratic process."
Nixon carries an urgent sense of mission indicative of her limited time in Troy. Her energy is constantly visible, whether she is sitting, articulating her thoughts or talking her way through a group of rambunctious first graders. Her mission culminates at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Troy High School auditorium.
The production is the result of a community-wide effort involving parents, teachers, friends and grandmothers. It is the result of loads of cardboard, paint, papier-mache, glue and staple-pliers.
Morrison Elementary students and staff work on the production every day after school from 3 to 4:30 p.m. and every Saturday from 1 to 4 p.m.
Nixon has worked internationally, designing, manipulating and dancing puppets for workshops, schools and demonstrations. She said there is not a place that doesn't needs a giant puppet show. In 2002, she was in Troy to produce an historic town timeline with puppets.
"I feel really excited about that fact that five years ago I was here and now I'm back and there's still a real community here that values cooperation," Nixon said.
She states on her Web site that she is "trying to surprise us out of our daily zombiedom with homemade spectacle and celebration", an effort that appeared close to completion during a school-day visit to Morrison Elementary. Her workshop, a large multipurpose space above the cafeteria, housed hundreds of unfinished cardboard creatures and supplies. It looked like epicenter of creative combustion: stacked piles of cardboard, bottles of paint, glue, staple-pliers and construction paper.
As a professional puppeteer, Nixon said she facilitates groups that are designing large-scale versions of their own stories.
"That is so satisfying for me," Nixon said, "to take something that I love -working with cardboard-and be like, 'look this stuff is lying around you all over the place, giant stacks of it, you can manipulate it into whatever you want.'"
"What else is there to do besides create what you want to see around you," she said.
Instead of interfering with daily classes, Nixon said the production is augmenting students' interests in their lessons and the natural world.
"My kids love this stuff," said second grade teacher Carol Parsons. "Every single person, every teacher, people in the community, everyone's rallying around." Parsons said.
Funding for the production came from various community, state and national fine arts organizations, including Kootenai Drug and True Value, the Cultural Trust Fund, the Montana Arts Council and National Endowment For Arts.
"It's not like we're telling a different story for every single elementary kid, we're collaborating," Nixon said. "We're trying to get kids to understand that collaboration takes some amount of sacrifice and it also takes being brave enough to put your own ideas out there."