Matt “Mattie B.” Bennett is nuts about nuts — the kind that fall from trees — which is why he and a bunch of his West Philadelphia friends are producing a puppet show about squirrels for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.
It takes all kinds to make up the Fringe.
As Mikaela Boone, the Fringe’s interim program director, points out, the Fringe’s non-juried collection of shows is as much driven by the artists as by the audience. For as little as $20 and an idea, anyone can put on almost any kind of Fringe show.
“I really appreciated the low cost of the entry fee,” Bennett said. “It was very low. It made it definitely doable for me to do this crazy thing.”
Bennett and his cadre of fellow nut enthusiasts, musicians, and West Philly friends fall into a Fringe category of performers that Boone describes as “citizen artists — people who have full-time jobs doing something else and still do something for the Fringe.”
“Mr. Nutterbocker’s 7-Year Plan”, by Bennett and crew, known as Wise Possum Puppetry, can appeal to both adults and kids.
In a city where more than one in four residents are millennials, now in the thick of their childbearing years, there are lots of demographic-heavy, future-of-the-arts explanations for the wealth of kids’ programming at this year’s Fringe.
“Kids’ programming is important because it teaches children the value of art and they are the next generation of audiences, art supporters, and arts makers,” Boone says.
The Fringe Festival has several dozen kids’ performances, including circus, puppet shows, immersive improv, and “Family Snacks,” a “musical drag story time for kids of all ages,” said John Jarboe, founding artistic director of the Bearded Ladies Cabaret Co.
Besides being fun, many kids’ shows have a lesson in mind – acceptance, bravery, feelings, joy. “Mr. Nutterbocker’s 7-Year Plan” is no exception.
Bennett works as the general manager of Keystone Tree Crops Cooperative, a Pennsylvania group dedicated to the promotion of nuts — a regenerative crop. (Plant corn and get one year’s worth of corn on the cob; plant a chestnut tree and get literally hundreds of years of nuts, explains Bennett.)
“In general, when we band together and assist nature, it’ll help us,” Bennett said, “especially if you are growing nut trees. Trees are incredibly generous.”
The nut business, Bennett said, “is very old, and very male, and we need to have more people into nut-growing and nut-foraging, so we want to make it a family-friendly event. I came up with the idea that we should have a puppet show based on squirrels.”
Originally Bennett was planning the puppet show as part of a statewide nut festival slated for Nov. 9 at Lundale Farm in Pottstown. He figured that the best way to make sure it was ready by then was to get it done on time for September’s Fringe festival.
The plot involves a Mr. Nutterbocker, a squirrel, who wants to impress a lady friend, Squirrelina, with his large cache of nuts (no winking allowed!). He enlists his friend Chip, a chipmunk, to help, but obstacles arise, among them, a large, larceny-minded puppet raccoon.
Bennett is part of a group of neighborhood musicians who started jamming on Thursday evenings at Clark Park during the pandemic and still play between 7 and 9:30 p.m.
Lately, on other nights, they’ve been gathering in co-producer Lexi Lewis’ West Philly basement to build puppets and make nuts out of balloons and paper mache. By pure coincidence, Bennett was working at the neighborhood’s Knockbox Café when he overheard a playwright talking with a friend about his projects. Bennett introduced himself and recruited Noah Mannix, a playwright and set builder, to the group.
Creative storytelling for kids
Other kid programming isn’t quite as nutty, but still fun.
LaTanya “Tanya” Morgan, executive director of Sawubona Creativity Project in South Philadelphia, will host a family-friendly theater arts workshop involving parents and kids in theater-making exercises followed by a performance. Also on tap from Sawubona is “StoryUp.” Kids write stories, then put them in a hat for improv artists to choose and perform.
“Theater arts is a creative pathway to self-actualization, compassion, and community-building,” Morgan said. Children “are practicing how to be good human beings through art.”
The Bearded Ladies hope “Family Snacks” will counter some of the tension around gender. “There’s a lot of tension and politicization — what’s in our libraries, what’s not in our libraries,” Jarboe said. “We’re not going to have those discussions. We’re going to celebrate and we’re going to have a lovely time.”
Jarboe envisions a space for queer families to feel comfortable, and for everyone to see shows “centered in values of joy, love, and really owning and accepting who you are.”
Here is how to find family-friendly shows during the Fringe Festival, which runs Sept. 5-29:
On the Philadelphia Fringe website, under Fringe Festival 2024 Events, click on Genre. At the top of the drop-down menu is the “Art for Young Audiences (Kids Fringe)” selection.
The Fringe website is also the pathway to kids’ programming arranged by the Cannonball Festival, which runs through Sept. 29. You can search its website, CannonballFestival.org/cannonballkids. There are free outdoor performances every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at Liberty Lands park, 913 N. 3d St.
FYI
“Mr. Nutterbocker’s 7-Year Plan”, Sept. 20 at 7 p.m., Open Kitchen Sculpture Garden, 2241 N. Philip St.; Sept. 28 at 4 p.m., Cesar Andreu Iglesias Garden, 425 Arlington St., and Sept. 29 at 5 p.m., Pentridge Station, 5110-5120 Pentridge St. Free.
“Family Snacks,” 11 a.m. on Sept. 8, 15, and 22, at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, 1214 Arch St. The museum is also the site of John Jarboe: The Rose Garden, Jarboe’s interactive, immersive, visual arts experience exploring trans identity and belonging. Free. “Family-Friendly Workshop and Show,” Sept. 7 at 11 a.m., (free) and “StoryUp,” Sept. 8 at 2 p.m. ($5), Sawubona Creativity Project, 1935 E. Passyunk Ave.
