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BareBones Productions is a non-profit performing arts company with a mission to “bring art into community and community into art through movement, puppetry and spectacle performance; creative re-use, education, and collaboration”. Operating as a collective, they bring visual and performing arts to the community through visionary parade sections, outdoor installations, and spectacle performances. Performances usually include stilt walkers, bicyclists, and huge puppets and culminate with their Annual Halloween Outdoor Puppet Extravaganza, 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”. Find this event at Hidden Falls Regional Park the weekend closest to Halloween.

Other BareBones Productions

Beyond the Halloween event, BareBones produces other community events during the year. You can find a calendar of upcoming events here. Productions include Winter Pageants on ice and snow and other outdoor puppet shows like The Little Match Girl and Raven Steals the Sun.

More recently, they have been hosting Dumpster Duels, which sound like a lot of fun. Puppet artists are given a “trash pile” of found objects and are given 30 hours to create their puppets and write a show to present to the public the next day. These annual competitions take place during the summer.

This entry was created October 16, 2015
and most-recently updated August 28, 2019