BareBones Halloween Outdoor Puppet Extravaganza

[BareBones Halloween Outdoor Puppet Extravaganza is] a community-created spectacle pageant of larger-than-life puppetry, drama, stilting, dance, fire, song, and music that honors the circle of life by celebrating its seasonal arc of death in the Fall.  The myriad historical and literary thematic sources for our collaborative and original storyboards have included the Russian folktale of “Baba Yaga and her Fearsome Trials,” the idea of “Rot and Compost as Creative Forces,” and the ancient Summerian myth of “Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld.”

The pageant always includes a section where members of the audience are invited, through a public naming ceremony, to honor friends and relations who have passed on.  Everyone is also offered a chance afterward to honor the dead privately with the help of artistic installations such as labyrinths and “hungry ghost” altars set up on the pageant site.  After the performance, the audience joins the cast in enjoying hot food and drink served by Sisters’ Camelot, Minneapolis’ free organic food distribution collective, and raucous dancing with live music performed by local bands including Gypsy Brass-Americana party legends, the Brass Messengers.

Saturday, October 26
Sunday, October 27
Thursday, October 31
Friday, November 1
Saturday, November 2

All performances at 7pm, Hidden Falls Regional Park, North Gate, Mississippi River Blvd. S at Magoffin Ave · 3/4 mile south of Ford Parkway in St. Paul

Donations accepted