SITE-SPECIFIC COMMUNITY PROCESSIONS
PAW creates community-based site-specific pageants and processions, that involve residents at every stage of the creative process. We work within existing events and festivals, as well as initiating new pageant events in response to local culture, physical environment, oral history, and current sociopolitical concerns. We build processional artworks from scratch – using the same Puppetraising process we developed for the NY Village Halloween Parade. Afterwards we leave these elements in the communities where they were conceived, laying the roots for an annual procession to grow and evolve.
How does one invent a tradition? The very idea seems self-contradictory. Invention implies something new, a recasting of rules or conventions, while tradition implies something old, a nurturing of rituals whose every repetition lends them power. We are motivated by the paradoxical proposition of seeding new traditions from buried narratives. We have found that the collective task of building site-specific ceremonies, pageants, or rituals can galvanize communities, preserve fragile histories, and affirm a sense of local identity against a tide of increasing globalization.
The invention of tradition requires that a community ask itself precise and in-depth questions. What defines local for us? What distinguishes our community from that of our neighbors? What images, sounds, or tastes define us? What points in our history, collective or individual have formed us? What do we remember (or wish to remember) and what have we forgotten? What has marked our moments of resistance or dissent? The questions vary depending on the specific context, but invariably the visual elements distilled from this process act as vessels to sustain and disseminate the ephemeral narratives and fragments of vernacular culture that define a community’s identity.
MORINESIO, ITALY Midsummer Pageant in the Italian Alps
PORT OF SPAIN, TRINIDAD Rights of Passage:
A contemporary Dragon Mas' in Trinidad's Carniva
LAKE WORTH, TEXAS Coyote's Way
A Texas Puppetscape
The Black Cat Committee.
Revisiting Bulgakov's Master and Margerita
ISTANBUL, TURKEYThe Karagöz Variations
KATONAH, NYCommute of the Species
Invasive Species Board a NY Commuter Train
POUGHKEEPSIE, NYWalking on Air:
Opening Procession for Walkway Over the Hudson
QUEENS, NYOdysseus at Hell Gate:
An East River Puppetscape
BINGHAMTON, NYMarking Time across Cultures
CHINATOWN, NYC1st Annual Marco Polo Procession:
A Silk Road unfurls on Mott Street
ANN ARBOR, MI A Fools Feast in the Academy
RHINEBECK, NYSinterklaas
SLEEPY HOLLOW, NYRemaking a Hudson Valley Legend
(in collaboration with Rocking the Boat)
PORTLAND, ME Procession of the Ram, an African Rite of Spring
2012 PEN WORLD VOICES FESTIVAL
Ex Libris roams NYC's High Line.
Morningside Lights.
Opening of the Rail Yards Section
2014 PEN WORLD VOICES FESTIVAL
A Procession of Confessions.
