Giant puppet for Eastwood

Pass the word!  A diversity of people from all corners of Eastwood is needed to build a giant puppet!

Eastwood could create its own huge puppet and be a part of the Art-In-Motion Spectacular on September 11, 2010.

THE PUPPET
If you haven’t seen one of Open Hand Theater’s giant street puppets in action, you’ve missed something. Take a look at this website to see how such large puppets are created.

OUR puppet would be created BY Eastwood residents, FOR Eastwood residents. We could keep it for Memorial Day parades, participation at local games where Eastwood teams are playing, any place where we’d want a recognizable Eastwood presence that is so much fun.

Imagine something like this:

THE PURPOSE
This is not just about making a puppet, but rather giving people from all over Eastwood a chance to work together building something fun with the help of Open Hand Theater. Art-In-Motion is one of many projects that unite Syracuse communities with Syracuse University and with each other. It’s our golden opportunity to join three other neighborhoods for a public event that focuses on the neighborhoods, not on City Hall, SU professors, athletes, politicians or the usual well-connected characters that get all the attention. This is about US, the residents of this city.

The puppet can be built over the course of many weeks this summer, the schedule to be determined by the people involved. Geoffrey Navias of Open Hand Theater can be of greatest assistance at the beginning, say, during two or three meetings in June, then of lesser assistance in July and the first half of August – he could come a couple times during that time – and then again of greater assistance later in August.

THE PERFORMANCE
It can be developed by those building the puppet or by a completely different group or a mix. It can be a very specific involvement in the spectacular itself, downtown on September 11, and/or it might be as simple as a procession out of Eastwood toward downtown, like sending the puppet off. This procession could end two blocks from Eastwood, get into a vehicle and then walk into Armory Square from two blocks away. Or it could be a complete walk all the way down James Street, whatever the participants want to do. It could be a send-off one day and then, say, a week later it would “arrive” downtown for the spectacular.

Some of the cloth used for the puppet will be available for participants to use as an accessory, such as a tie or sash, to t-shirts that will be made for all participants from all the neighborhoods involved.

THE PEOPLE
This project is already fully funded. We just need the people. Young and old, families, singles and couples from all corners of Eastwood.

WANT TO PARTICIPATE? NEED MORE INFORMATION?
Contact Lonnie Chu through this website’s contact form (scroll down on that page) or through email: