Fourth Annual Elkland Puppet Festival
A Little Imagination Can Go A Long Way
The fourth annual Elkland Puppet Festival was held Saturday, Sept. 19, and organizers put on an event filled with extraordinary feats of daring, strength, motion and mystery.The event was hosted by the Elkland Art Center, which is in Todd, N.C., and the festival featured three puppeteers from around the world and around the state: Hobey Ford, creator of the foamies, Keith Shubert of Toybox Theater (Asheville) and Madison J. Cripps (Asheville), creator of Strings Attached Marionettes.
The event was a non-profit one that is held at the old Todd Mercantile and the Bank of Todd in Ashe County but close enough to Watauga County.
There were plenty of children, and adults, that just came out to have a change of pace from the norm. The skits were really well done and each puppeteer interacted well with the audience. Plenty of giggles could be heard from the children, and adults, when faced with having to use their imagination. Something we tend to forget we have in this fast-paced world.




The summer movie season is taking a bow for 2009, with a wooly Wilkes County, N.C. native, a boy wizard who I bear some resemblance to, interstellar voyagers and jive-talking, smashing robots bringing home the bacon for the movie industry.























