It was a magical moment at Crescent Park on Wednesday afternoon, as a pair of 12 -foot-tall fairy-tale creatures took an evening stroll, accompanied by a brass band and trailed by a pink, spoon-billed bird with the wingspan of a Piper Cub.
The pop-up parade was the culmination of a 10-day, giant puppet-building workshop, conducted by British-based master puppeteer Andrew Kim. The classes and public display were meant to plant the seed of puppetry in the imaginations of New Orleans do-it-yourself Carnival community.
A mini parade featuring three giant puppets marched along the Mississippi riverfront in New Orleans’ Crescent Park on March 16, 2022. The parade was the culmination of a 10-day puppet building workshop led by Britain-based artist Andrew Kim.
The puppetry primer was the brainchild of Mardi Gras enthusiasts Alison Schreuder and Caroline Thomas, who paid for the project with crowdsourced funding and student fees. Thomas, an accomplished parade designer and artist who composed this year’s Rex parade, said she “always wants to see Carnival grow and be experimental.”
“And if you want to see Mardi Gras evolve, you’ve got to give people the Tool Box,” she said. “Hopefully the class will reverberate in Mardi Gras.”
Thomas said she thinks that giant puppets are a natural extension of the rolling gizmos you see in the downtown marching parades. The structures, she pointed out, are lightweight, and can be disassembled into pieces that fit into an SUV.
Above all, she said, they’re magical.
Indeed, on Wednesday evening, the friendly giant puppets made onlookers see things from the perspective of kids. Despite the knowledge that the creatures were just papier-mâché, bamboo and fabric, it was impossible not to believe – as Thomas put it – “that this thing just came to life.”