Handley Puppeteers on Broadway (Virginia, that is)

Friday, July 18th we loaded up our tour bus (the new name for the library's old gray van) and became a convoy of 4 vans of youth puppeteers headed south to Broadway, VA. It was a hot day and the Village Library of Broadway had cleared out some room in a building called the "cannery." We set up our stage and enjoyed a lunch provided by the staff of the Village Library. We had just enough time to talk through some of the logistics of working in a small space when the children and adults started to arrive. We set up our stage and got ready for the opening number.


We're singing "Happy to be Here" in this picture. The puppet leads are Omar, Priscilla and Herb. The banner on front of the stage was made by some of our artistic puppeteers.

Children were sitting and perched everywhere. Each song we did was better than the one before. Our program included songs that the puppets sang and stories told by our librarian Miss Donna. We were getting ready for the next song while the stories were being told. Our program called "Bug Beautiful" was put together from songs we had been practicing and presenting all summer.





This next song was selected by Matt. "Mr. Sun" was created by several of us. I think Kierstan drew the sunglasses on his face. In this song "Mr. Sun" is held by puppeteer, Beth. The puppets on the back row have a special dance move during the song. The butterfly on the front row sings the lead.



We had a lot of fun with the song "Splish, Splash." We even had a bubble machine! The kids really liked the bubbles. They danced around to the music and tried to catch the bubbles. The bubbles really traveled far into the room in this building because there was an air conditioning unit in the window behind the stage. The air pushed the bubbles into the room and over the heads of most of the audience.


The lead on this song is the little guy puppet in the center of the front row.


















The bubbles were coming out thick at this point.






After the "Chigger Song" and the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" we go on a bear hunt. Everyone screamed when the bear came out and started to tear down the stage to get to Miss Donna.

We had everyone up and dancing on "Silly Willy" and then we ended with "Ten in Bed" with a reminder to not "let the bed bugs bite!"


Here we are at the library sign.


We are joined by the Village Library librarian, Barbara Andes in this next picture. She is the one in the blue shirt.



We had a great time at this library. We can now say we have performed on Broadway!