Tales From Cowtown was a puppet show performed in 2024, featuring a variety of styles and sizes of puppetry, and funded through the Upstate Creative Corps, via the California Arts Council. The 45 minute show popped up at a variety of outdoor venues in rural Northern California, and engaged local youth with stories about environmental emergencies and community resilience. The performance itinerary was as follows…
Sat April 27 - Blue Lake Block Party
Fri May 10 - Covelo Farmers Market
Sat May 11 - Willits - Recreation Grove Park
Sat May 18 - Weaverville - Lee Fong Park
Sun May 19 - Hyampom Community Hall
Sat May 25 - Redway - KMUD Block Party
Fri June 21 - Middletown Farmers Market
Sat June 22 - Lucerne - Harbor Park Artists Village
Sat June 22 - Lakeport Waterfront Park
About the Show
Tales From Cowtown is a project by The Cowtown Serenaders, a Humboldt County based puppet troupe created by Tayloranne Finch and Daniel Nickerson. This project is funded in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency, through the Upstate California Creative Corps program.
The show addresses environmental and public health in rural communities with a rustic multimedia performance featuring folkloric storytelling, a variety of puppetry techniques, and interjections of live and recorded music. A group of artists are collaboratively building the show and executing a spring 2024 performance itinerary that includes schools, libraries, farmers markets, street festivals, and other cultural hubs in four rural counties of Northern California: Humboldt, Mendocino, Lake and Trinity.
The show invites rural audiences to creatively engage with the issues facing their communities: a fragile environment, an unsure economic future, and limited access to social support systems. Rural resilience is the unifying theme, encouraging audiences to take an active role in recovery efforts, and in the restoration of balance to the environment.
© 2023 Greetings From Cowtown