Culture & Community | Arts & Culture | Neighborhoods | Westville | Puppetry | Westville Renaissance Arts (WRVA)
Kapp Singer Photos.
A cheerful crowd of costumed characters paraded through the streets of downtown Westville. At the front of the pack was a buck-toothed troll with a huge, egg-shaped head, bulging eyes, and green webbed feet. Behind that processed a towering, slender giraffe, a dragon, a solar system, a star, a chicken, a garbage truck, a humongous baseball hat, a pinwheel, a pirate ship, and a five-foot-tall slice of pie.
The occasion was the annual Giant Puppet and People Making Mayhem Parade, orchestrated by the local artist and art teacher Muffy Pendergast. Now in its 14th year, the parade drew large crowds last Saturday with around 100 participants and an equal number of spectators. Originally planned for October 29, the event was postponed a week due to rain, and Saturday’s warm and sunny weather was a welcome sight for the monstrous and intricate papier-mâché puppets.
“I started with a big circle of cardboard and covered it with big sheets of newspaper and papier-mâché’d that and then I painted it,” said nine-year-old Ramona Kidwell, whose planet puppet was one part of a solar system carried by her and her friends.
“People actually notice it—it’s not just marching,” Kidwell added. She described that as her favorite part of the parade.
Top: Muffy Pendergast. Bottom: Nine-year-old Ramona Kidwell.
Alongside friends and family, Kidwell built the puppet over a series of weekend workshops throughout October, which Pendergast hosted at Edgewood Park’s Coogan Pavilion. With funding provided by the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance (WVRA), Pendergast was able to acquire art supplies for participants to use for free. Sunday morning saw her putting some last-minute finishes on her own work.
“I got the glue guns!” she called out as she put the final touches on her troll on Saturday morning. “That’s the only kind of gun I like.”
Palmira Pina-Shelton, of Hamden, built an antelope for her inaugural puppet parade march. “I wanted to do something Afro-centric,” she said. “Sometimes we don’t even know what we have inside as artists and then we just come up with something like this. With cardboard, no less!”
At 10 a.m., the pavilion’s rear corner was a menagerie of cardboard and paint. One by one, paraders—from young children to retirees—retrieved their creations, carried them the short distance to the corner of West Rock and Whalley Avenues, and lined up. An hour later, the sidewalk was overflowing with eager puppet bearers. As they waited for the parade to begin, there was a palpable buzz in the air.
Top: Palmira Pina-Shelton with her completed antelope. Bottom: The Hillhouse Marching Band.
This year, for the first time, the marching band from James Hillhouse High School accompanied the parade. Musicians stood at the ready in their crisp blue and gray uniforms, adding an air of elegance to the smorgasbord of crazy costumes.
With the signal to start from Pendergast—now fully transformed into a troll—and three short tweets of a whistle from conductor Josh Smith, the band launched into song. Crisp snare hits and loud horns propelled the parade forward—up Whalley, onto Fountain Street, right on Central Avenue, and back down Whalley towards the park. Onlookers cheered and jostled to take photos of the elaborate creations. Those marching laughed joyously at the peculiar collection of creatures around them.
The parade concluded at the CitySeed's weekly Sunday market in Edgewood Park, and participants admired each other’s puppets as the band kept everyone dancing.
“It was pretty cool. It’s very creative,” said Zariyah Whitehurst, a 10th grader at Hillhouse who plays alto saxophone in the band. “I just like the vibe.”
“It means we’re social. It means there’s a low barrier to entry into civic life here,” said State Rep. Patricia Dillion, who has represented Connecticut’s 92nd district—which contains Westville—since 1985 and has attended every puppet parade since its inception. “You don’t have to join the right club. You can just show up and help to make puppets.”
“It means we have fun, we’re friendly, we’re good for kids, and it means there’s a place to meet a lot of people,” she added. “One of the good things about living in a city — and in a diverse city — is that we have places to meet. We shouldn’t be in cocoons.” Dillion explained that many of her constituents have told her that the puppet parade is one of the primary reasons they enjoy living in Westville.
“It's like a salve.” Pendergast said. “You’re gonna have this experience and bond with other people.”
“People just think ‘Oh I’m having a good time painting and building together,’ but there’s so much more to it. This is people connecting through creative experiences.”
