(Radio Iowa) – The southeast Iowa town of Oskaloosa is hosting what’s known as The Uplifting Puppet Festival starting today (Monday) and running two full weeks. There will be daily workshops around town where kids and adults can create their own puppets and the event will conclude with two puppet parades featuring dozens of hand-made creations. Brant Bollman, founder of the Uplifting Puppet Company, says the goal is to get the community involved in making unique art and having fun.
“The theme is Out Of This World and it has kind of a space/science fiction/UFO theme,” Bollman says. “So we’ll be making some dancing puppets that look like aliens and we’ll be making some masks and there’ll be a lot of opportunities for people to get involved.” This is the festival’s second year in Oskaloosa and in last year’s nighttime parade, Bollman got inside of his lighted, giant humanoid puppet and walked the route. This year, he’s putting the finishing touches on his largest puppet yet, a 15-foot tall extraterrestrial. Bollman’s using L-E-Ds, durable fabric and paper mache’ to bring the alien to life.
“I make a backpack kind of frame, like a camping backpack, but I make them custom and will create a support structure that goes up above, and I control kind of an upside-down marionette kind of thing where I’ll have big control rods that control the arms,” Bollman says. “They’re made to walk around and to dance and to really inspire people.” The first of the two Uplifting Puppet Parades is scheduled for 9 P-M on Friday, June 12th, following the Friday After Five concert on the Oskaloosa town square. Bollman says the plan is for a huge, home-made flying saucer to soar into the square.
“It’ll be kind of like a flash mob once the UFO lands and out will come my big tall dancing alien, and then a lot of middle schoolers that I’ve worked with have made pool noodle/dancing aliens that look a lot like the big giant one, but are about three or four feet tall,” Bollman says, “and then everybody else can join in and we’re going to have a big dance party.”
The second parade will be held at 2 P-M on Saturday, June 13th during Oskaloosa’s Art on the Square. He says the daytime puppet march gives audiences a chance to see the giant puppets in the light of day.
