Participants in this workshop will design and build a parade mask that can be easily transformed into a giant puppet. This workshop will focus on accessible and light-weight construction techniques using recycled materials for making the heads of giant puppets. Capezzuti will bring her set of interchangeable and swap-able puppet bodies so we can take our work on a test run at the Puppet Homecoming Parade on Sunday afternoon. She will share the tools, skills, patterns, and techniques that she uses to make hundreds of puppets with people of all ages in her Pittsburgh community. As a bonus, participants will learn a selection of dances for giant puppets, inspired by her favorite project to date, Giant Puppet Dance Club.

Cheryl Capezzuti has been making giant puppets and community-interactive public art experiences in Pittsburgh for more than 25 years. She is best known for the artist-made, people-powered First Night Pittsburgh Parade which features about 300 giant puppets, puppet-mobiles, dozens of musicians, pedicab puppets and over 400 volunteers making it happen. She’s been an Artist-in-Residence at the Pittsburgh International Airport where she made puppets to parade through the airport completely out travelers’ discards and she’s been commissioned by the City of Pittsburgh to tell its history using giant puppets for the Bicentennial Parade. She teaches at Falk Lab School at the University of Pittsburgh where her Giant Puppet Dance Club may be the most unexpected student program. Between parades, her puppets are housed at the Braddock Carnegie Free Library, one of Andrew Carnegie’s first libraries, and can be checked out by anyone with a library card for events, celebrations and just for fun. Learn more at www.puppetsforpittsburgh.com.