The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry will once again offer fall community puppet-building workshops to design and build life-size and over-life-size puppets for a new pageant production to be performed at the Celebrate Mansfield Festival in Downtown Storrs.

No experience is necessary to participate in these free community puppet-building workshops. Space is limited, so advance registration is strongly encouraged. Participants can come for one or both days but should register for the 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. or/and 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. time slot(s). Minors must be accompanied by an adult.

Produced in collaboration with UConn’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History, and directed by Sara Peattie of Boston’s Puppeteers Cooperative, with live music by Waldron’s Studio 88, Prehistoric Mansfield will present a day in the life of the animal kingdom thousands of years ago in what is now Mansfield. In a soap opera format narrated by a Giant Beaver (Castoroides ohioensis), and featuring an enormous and boastful Stag Moose, a swarm of gossiping insects, and other puppet characters, Prehistoric Mansfield will be an exciting family-friendly spectacle.

If you require accommodation to participate, contact the Ballard Institute at bimp@uconn.edu or 860-486-8580. This community puppet project is sponsored by the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry and the Mansfield Downtown Partnership, Inc. For more information about the 22nd-annual Celebrate Mansfield Festival, visit downtownstorrsfestival.org.