Cape Cod Parent Resource Fair Spotlight: Dream Tale Puppets

With the ​Cape Cod Parent Resource Fair rapidly approaching we will be sharing blog posts on our participating sponsors, vendors and nonprofits.  You will find out more about these amazing businesses and what they offer to our community. They will be sharing their services, advice, what challenges face our community as well as upcoming events they will be having.  Make sure to check out our virtual program and resource guide ahead of the event so you can plan for what you want to see!  Childcare is available as well for use during speaker panels. If you preregister for the speakers or childcare you will earn extra raffle tickets-just email us and you will receive tickets at the door! We hope to see you at the Resource Fair!

The 2nd Cape Cod Parents Resource Fair will be held on Saturday, January 26, 2019 from 9:00 AM – 2:00 PM at Cape Cod Community College in the Cafe, use lot 9. 
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All parents, caregivers and children will enjoy this educational and fun resource fair. Attendees can connect with local family-friendly nonprofit organizations, resource providers and businesses that are dedicated to helping families in our community grow and prosper.  The event will feature informative parent-focused sessions for adults led by area professionals along with fun and engaging entertainment for the whole family including music, art, yoga and even a dance class!

Every ticket holder will be entered to win a swag bag plus receive additional entries for the other giveaways from ​local businesses.

​Purchase Your Ticket

Dream Tale Puppets

​1.     Tell us about your business/non profit and how it benefits local families?
 
Dream Tale Puppets produces and performs puppet shows for families, conducts puppetry, acting and theater classes and workshops, leads residencies (we are ready to visit an organization or cultural center and stay for shows and/or workshops) and hosts other puppet theaters. All Dream Tale Puppets’ artists and performers are highly skilled, well educated, trained and experienced professionals. Our shows tell stories based on fairy tales, and masterpieces of children’s literature. We use a variety of theatrical languages. We enjoy exploring traditional and developing puppetry styles.
Each project is an adventure led by curiosity. The shows are like recordings of these creative processes in which we examine characters, shapes, and textures and play with motifs, materials, colors, words and sounds and mix theatrical storytelling with the poetry of children’s play and dreams.
 
We offer life theatrical experiences with all benefits high quality life art offers.  Our shows are invitations to the world of play, dreams, inspiration, enchantment and reflection. The world is much better with arts. We offer our art and we invite children, families and all interested to join us in making the world a little nicer.
  
 
2.     Where is it located?
 
We are associated with and supported by John Wesley United Methodist Church in Falmouth where we have a studio for building puppets, a storage, where we rehearse, perform and present other puppeteers. I live in Cotuit; two actors live in Falmouth some are from Boston area and NYC. We perform at Cape Cod libraries, the Cape Cod Children’s Museum, Woods Hole Community Hall, Cotuit’s Freedom Hall and many other places both on Cape and off, including out of state.
 
3.     What is your favorite thing about our community?
 
People on the Cape understand, value, appreciate and support arts. We are lucky to be surrounded by friends, fans, patrons and supporters. This allows us to do things which we really like and we believe are important. We are able to follow our curiosity and inspiration, we can explore, research, study, practice and create. Dream Tale Puppets operates as a small creative community supported and in cooperation with many other art, cultural, educational and spiritual communities and organizations. Thanks to our supporters and partners we can develop our programs and create new ways to share joy. We can bring together families and communities in pursuit of a richer world of togetherness through diversity.
 
4.     How else do you get involved with the community?
 
We respond to all calls and invitations and we reach out to organizations we consider potentially interested in collaboration. We have programs ready to be performed; we work on new ones, we teach and work with children and adults. We also customize content of the programs to the specific circumstances and needs of our partners be these libraries, schools, other cultural centers, or parents.
 
5.     What do you think are the biggest challenges facing parents in our community?
 
I am not sure if my assumption would be correct if I would say that today parents face a much harder economic reality than their parents faced. Then I may have yet another assumption that today it is harder to connect with others, parents have less time, they are further apart from their friends and even families, and they are more stressed by demands of economy and pressures of culture of consumerism.
 
6.     What is your favorite memory or story over the years involving you and your business?
 
There are so many treasured memories. My favorites are those meetings with our hosts and audiences. There is always a lot to do before we can invite the audience. Our hosts most often had to raise funds to have us perform. Preparing space is an art in itself and we often do it together. It happens sometimes that our host may at first not be aware of how important this is. We arrived once to an elementary school in Hartford and we found that there had been some misunderstanding and we had less time to set the stage then we needed. On top of this the cafeteria where the show was planned was simply very dirty after the lunch period. There wouldn’t have been anyone to help us if not for an amazing principal. She took the mop and the bucket and after 20 minutes the room was sparkling clean. When she was mopping we were setting the stage and all was ready on time. And the show was great. This was one wonderful person’s act, but to organize the show a community is needed. Another memorable example of this would be the presentation of Jack and the Beanstalk at the Harvest Festival organized by Bourne Society for Historical Preservation. We performed in an old historical Carriage House with a dirt floor and no light. But they really wanted us to perform. They moved out the old carriages. Someone brought many pieces of large painter’s canvas to cover the dirt. On top of that, small squares of carpet (samples) were arranged for the audience to sit on. Many lamps were brought in to light the stage area. The audience was wonderful and after the show we were treated to an amazingly tasty homemade lunch. I could continue with this kind of memories. This is so rewarding to bring in our little community and art and to be embraced by all these wonderful communities and people.
 
7.     What advice would you give parents and caregivers in our community?
 
If the problem as I assumed earlier exists, I mean problem of not enough time and pressure of consumerist reality, I wonder if seeking other like minded parents interested in good old values of togetherness, playtime, imagination, inspiration, joy of sharing time, resources and activities would help. I wonder if looking for places, programs and communities where these values are explored, cherished and practiced could be a way to go. Scientists warn us that children of today’s parents may live in an apocalyptic world. Should we pretend we don’t care or could we seek hope in seeking other ways to live and people with whom we could share concern, values and with whom we could try to change the direction the world is heading to?
 
8.     Do you have any specials, events, or anything else taking place this upcoming year that our parents should know about?
 
We have “Rumpelstilskin” scheduled at the Cotuit Public Library for Saturday, April 20 at 10:45 a.m. For February school vacation we are inviting children 7 -12 years old to the Acting, Puppetry, and Theater Workshop at the John Wesley United Methodist Church in Falmouth. We will work Monday – Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. and we will have a lot of fun playing acting games, building puppets, creating, improvising, rehearsing, and performing. Following months and with the help of Falmouth Cultural Council and Falmouth cultural organizations we will be presenting our other programs and programs by a number of other excellent New England puppetry artists.
 
We invite parents interested to e-mail us at info@dreamtalepuppets.org and to give us contact information. We will be sending out newsletters with information on upcoming programs and offers. This information could also be found on our website: http://www.dreamtalepuppets.org/calendar/calendar.html and on our Facebook profile. Also on Facebook I post regularly pictures from our present production development.