https://vimeo.com/18391663]
“The office is a mess,” Alice Manos says with a laugh. “It doesn’t usually look like this.” She stands off to the corner of the Spiral Q Theater office and pulls wires across the open room. Alice has been working as a communications and development assistant for Spiral Q, a community-based puppet theater since August of last year.
But what attracted her to the organization wasn’t the theatrics but what truly makes the theater unique: its dedication to
raising awareness of important community-related issues affecting neighborhoods in Philadelphia. “We hold these art at the park workshops that are free to the public,” she says, standing in what they call the puppet museum where the large free-standing creations from the previous years’ parades are set on display. “Anyone can come and learn how to make a puppet and anyone can join at any time. We’ve had people join the parade the day of just because they were interested or curious.”
Liza Goodell, the production manager at the theater, stands next to her as they reminisce about past years performances. “Last year the parade began with birds flying in,” she says with a laughs as she tells the story.“ Then suddenly everyone in the crowd was whistling along and making bird calls. It’s really like a game of follow the leader, there’s no need for a real performance and we have it designed that way.”
The parade they are referring to is, of course, Peoplehood, one of Spiral Q’s largest annual events and parades. The parade, which takes place each fall in West Philadelphia, starts at the Paul Robeson House on Walnut Street and ends at Clark Park on 45th and Chester.
However, the Peoplehood season kicks off weeks earlier with a community meeting where artists and residents collaborate together to establish what issues are most important and relevant to the surrounding areas. “Last year the theme was the Democratic process and the election,” Manos explains as she points out two large puppets standing up against the back wall of the museum. The puppets, both dressed in suits and ties are the two symbols of the Democratic and Republican parties, simply stated, a donkey and an elephant. “And this year it was the economy,” explains Manos.
The latest theme was undoubtedly an important one for most of the neighborhoods that are within the Spiral Q Theater’s reach. Though not all issues are nationally based, one of the more successfully executed campaigns by the theater within the past year involved the recent closure of many small local libraries in the city. Ted Enoch, the program director at Spiral Q, explains that the organization works to develop and raise awareness to these problems across a very multi-generational and diverse population. “Friends of the Free Library is a coalition to help save libraries in the last round of budget cuts,” Enoch says as he holds up a hand painted sign baring a likeness to a library card that reads, “This card enables you to exercise your freedom to be informed. Use it often.
“They wanted to close the libraries and tons of folks didn’t like that, so they came to Spiral Q to create signs and messages that could remobilize the community and in the end the libraries were spared.” This is just one of the ways Spiral Q works to help communities figure out their core values and what essentially is most important to them as a whole, all while using art and creativity as a way to express these values in an effective way.
Spiral Q, though working from the small confines of their Mantua headquarters, is nothing less than a major driving force in community development in Philadelphia. From an outside perspective, the hand-painted doorways and colorful displays that coat the ins and outs of the Spiral Q Theater might seem to the untrained eye like a safe haven for kid-friendly puppetry, but the reality is much larger.
Spanning and crossing generational and cultural gaps, Spiral Q continues to move forward on its mission to create art in a colorful and effective way and to more importantly develop action in areas that need it the most. As pioneers in the art of protest puppetry, Spiral Q is seeking more ways to evoke change and raise issues not only in Mantua, but in Philadelphia, the United States and the rest of the world.
The theater, being based in Mantua, has made a point to not be restricted to the surrounding West Philadelphia community. Instead, the theater works to influence people all over the city with upcoming parades in Norris Square and Feltonville. Even the boundaries of the United States are not out of reach to Spiral Q’s influence.
Currently, Executive Director Tracy Broyles is working in South Africa on “Silkscreen, Resistance and Dissent,” which explores the significance of graphic arts in protests and social change. The experiences should factor into the future of Spiral Q’s already largely interaction and creative puppetry pageants.
Upcoming events in the city underline the continual theme: communities working together to create change. The Norris Square Parade, set for June 4 at Susquehanna and Front streets in North Philadelphia, has become of the largest functions for Spiral Q as this is the fourth year that it has collaborated with community members. “It’s a really exciting project,” Enoch says. “This year community leaders and members have asked that the parade be used to look at violence in the community and ways that they can respond to that to make the area safer.”
Starting on May 28, the group will work with over 250 fifth-graders for a month to create large puppets that will help the children understand the impact of community and cultural issues and how the children’s involvement is important.. “The kids all collaborate together to make these puppets,” Enoch says. “It’s a really beautiful project.”
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