Out and About in Our Community
By making stiltwalkers, giant puppets, and entertainers available for community events and activist efforts, Wise Fool helps to increase the visibility of local organizations working to improve our community. Wise Fool carries on the long tradition of using spectacle and street theatre to raise awareness, attract media coverage, and heighten audience engagement in social and activist efforts, as historically utilized by other companies including Bread and Puppet Theater, In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre, and Wise Fool Community Arts in California.
Ignite
An annual springtime program of Wise Fool since 2010, Ignite provides an opportunity for individuals, families, and organizations to create giant puppetry and street art that responds to our world.
performance about overcoming the memes of Scarcity, Consumption, and Apathy. The main characters were lured in by a slick Salesman and a giant media puppet, and were covered in material goods, even while they were being herded by monsters in the shape of fear and security. A water dragon led a 'die in' of all of nature's creations, helping to 'wake up' our main cahracters, who began to question what was going on. The act of questioning immediately drove away the media and Salemen and their pets. One by one, Scarcity, Consuption, and Apathy were debunked and the characters were liberated. The performance culminated in giving deposits to the Bank of the People, which gave out Seeds of Possibility seed packets to audience members. With the help of the Railyard Stewards, we encourages the audience to venture out on their own and create new gardens and new connections. Afterward, Wise Fool offered a free buffet of food and a puppet making workshop to the elated crowd.
Wise Fool artists led free drop-in “builds” where families, teens, adults, and elders worked together to create art that “pumped up the visual volume” on the youth voice of our community. The builds offered an open space to learn, make, share, and take part in creating giant puppets, props, stencils, banners, and street theatre. Wise Fool provided materials, tools, skills, and support. And in the end, the parade was a blast, as the powerful and colorful cohort of youth and their allies marched down the sidewalks of two of Santa Fe's largest roads, Cerrillos and St. Michael's, garnering honks and yells from the hundreds of passing cars. Wise Fool was thrilled to be able to use our annual IGNITE event to support such an amazing undertaking by powerful Santa Fe youth!
Ignite 2010: Raising Truth in the Streets celebrated International Workers Day and Wise Fool's 10th anniversary. Four public workshops culminated in a public procession and pageant on May Day 2010. Over 60 giant puppets were brought to life by 250 adults, teens, and kids, dancing along the procession route through the crowded Farmer’s Market to the music of Samba Fe. Hundreds of spectators then filled the Railyard Park to watch the giant puppet pageant, performed by 50 community members. The pageant featured an "awesome world" full of youth and environmental creations; a 6-foot corporate person head with live-action eating mouth, and arms bearing the words “borders” “greed” “apathy” and “war”; a contingent of giant puppet activists and leaders such as Cesar Chavez, Rosa Parks, Emma Goldman, Aung San Suu Kyi, Amy Goodman, and the Dalai Lama; and finally a 20-foot tall "All of Us" puppet raised triumphantly as a finale, where audience members pinned paper hearts and hands on which they’d written their vision for a better world.Circus Comes to School
Circus Comes to School, our in-school program, partners with teachers through arts, PE, and dance pathways to reach a broad section of at-risk and underserved youth in Northern New Mexico.
Links to Partner Organizations
Past Community Projects
Each spring, Carnival Performing Arts Center and Wise Fool provided a five-week series of circus and physical theatre workshops throughout various communities in Miami-Dade County for youth and adults. All children’s workshops culminated with a big-top circus performance in which all participants took part. 
In an effort to offer a fun, personally satisfying and educational outlet for the visions and perceptions of the mentally and physically challenged and to expose the general public to their fresh and creative world, Wise Fool New Mexico and its artists have been working with developmentally disabled adults through the arts programming of Challenge New Mexico since 1998..jpg)
