We had a couple of days off in Minneapolis, then hopped over to Oklahoma City, where we were warmly welcomed by the fine folks at Oklahoma City Community College’s Performing Arts Center!

Our visit to Oklahoma City included a lot of wind (I’m not used to wind like this!), extremely tasty fried catfish, and a sparkly collar lost by some dancer backstage, which is now in my keeping:

We were especially glad that we got to do a student matinee for a bunch of kids for whom arts funding for elementary schools had just been cut in half:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BD8tU-wLC-f/?taken-by=_hey_aj_

I’ve also been learning from Patrick Martel, one of the puppet designers (and puppeteers) for Nufonia, about how to repair the puppets and tiny props:

While in Oklahoma City, we even got to go see Toruk, the Cirque du Soleil show that Patrick designed! Funny to see the difference in scale between the puppets he worked on for Nufonia and the puppets he designed for Toruk :)

https://www.instagram.com/p/BFKS1ySzXbR/?tagged=toruk

One last shot of tiny Nufonia set pieces:

10 Apr This entry was published on April 10, 2016 at 10:44 am. It’s filed under Listen/Watch!, Pictures, Puppetry and tagged arts funding, arts in schools, Cirque du Soleil, field trip, Kid Koala, Nufonia Must Fall, Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma City Community College, Patrick Martel, student matinee, Toruk. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.