By Tucker Henderson

Reporter

As the summer begins to draw to a close and fall is approaching, the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center has been working tirelessly with local volunteers and children to present the 15th annual Puppet Pageant.

The Puppet Pageant is a community theater opportunity for local community members to engage in a large scale street-theater style performance of a homage to the Kalevala, Finland’s national epic. The story includes the legendary Väinömöinen and other memorable characters performed by local students utilizing hand made puppets and props along with a stilt walking aspect.

This year, the story will follow Väinömöinen as he saves the bees. With 17 local children participating this year and a dozen volunteers, the production is shaping up to be a memorable one.

Betsy Roder, executive director at the Cultural Center, said that this is a project that fits extremely well within the missions and goals of the Center. 

“With celebrating the local and being a window to the world,” said Roder. “Along with being a rural hub and vitality of the arts, this is a labor of love mission project. We’ve looked at it as a board and it hits all of those goals.”

With key themes of Finnish heritage, artistic development, student engagement, and rural programming, the Puppet Pageant has proven itself to be an important feature of the Cultural Center’s event offerings each year. The performances are high effort and a product of lots of planning and refinement each year.

“As a result of it being a high effort event and it’s during the summer, we’ve been really intentional about clarifying staff roles,” said Roder. “We do a lot of preplanning, we try to engage with the community and volunteers as much as we can, we write grants every year to try to get that grant funding, we stay connected with our local sponsors, so we’ve really tried to be methodical and intentional about how we can be the most organized that we can be to make this go off smoothly.”

As the 15th year started this past month, Roder said a comment from one of the directors, acknowledging the relationships made between the recurring participants.

“One of them said, ‘it kind of feels like a family reunion every year that first day of workshops when everyone shows up,’” said Roder. “I think it really brings kids together that maybe have different backgrounds and would’t be connected otherwise and have formed these friendships that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. It’s a lot of families, so I think it’s good for siblings too.

“I can speak as a mom,” she continued, “My kids have loved being part of it. They’ve loved the art side of it and the stilt walking part of it. I think it’s such a unique experience for these kids and something they wouldn’t have access to otherwise. Theater mentality is special, it’s a cool bond they form and a lot of good skills that they learn.”

New participants are joining each year as well as those returning to the pageant, which Roder loves to see.

“I think they get so much out of it,” she said. “They are learning skills, different art skills—they’re painting, they’re paper mache-ing, they’re building with clay, some of them sew—they’re learning how to work with others and how to respect the artistic directors. They build relationships, these are kids sometimes that maybe wouldn’t have these connections otherwise. The stilt walking is really nice for kids that are more inclined towards more physical things and maybe those who don’t typically do more physical things, but can excel in this because it’s different.”

Roder said that among the Cultural Center staff, creative director Anne Sawyer, assistant director Lisa Winters, musicians Curtis and Loretta, and narrator Adam Tervola Hultberg are huge parts of the performances each year, among many other dedicated volunteers.

“Curtis and Loretta are here as the musical directors and they do fun sound effects and Adam sings and they’re learning the Finnish heritage stuff too,” she said. “The stories of the Kalevala, they’re learning some Finnish language, there’s so many great things about the Puppet Pageant.”

Roder said that with the 15 years of experience, comes a lot of collective knowledge that helps lead and guide the performances each year.

“I think each year we continue to get better and at the end of the performance, I love when people come up to me and say, ‘wow, it happened again, it’s even better,’” she said. “It’s hard to get better 15 years in a row! What I love that we do is we continue to use the character that people know, we use the props and the puppets that exist and we add a little bit every year.

“That’s part of the creative process,” she continued. “It allows kids to still be part of the creation of it, but also making use of the wide variety and quality of things we’ve created over the years, so it’s this really cool combination of being thrifty and using what we have but also creating something new.”

Roder is involved with marketing and the financial side of the Puppet Pageant, but decided a while ago to give her own children some space to grow and problem solve while participating in the Puppet Pageant. To that end, she is able to find a spot in the audience each year as the performances kick off and watch with an audience member’s perspective.

“I love seeing it for the first time, so when the VFW and Finn Creek performances happen, I try to just watch it and take it in,” she said. “That’s always a moment for me that I really enjoy, because I don’t often get to just sit and watch.

“I love the moment when it all comes together and the kids are so proud of themselves,” she continued. “It’s just a really exciting and prideful moment. One of the other things I think the kids learn is creative problem solving and flexibility, because inevitably something goes wrong—whether it rains, or someone’s stilts aren’t on right, or they can’t get their costume on, or somebody forgets to go out when they’re supposed to—every year it seems like I see, ‘oh, well, they figured that out.’ If one person forgets to do something, the other person does it, so it’s this idea of being able to be flexible and react in the moment and those are such important skills for kids to learn too, so I always enjoy seeing that.”

Another aspect of the Puppet Pageant is the community involvement, partnerships, and sponsors. Without them, Roder, said the Pageant wouldn’t happen.

“That engagement with local businesses and organizations like the Civic and Commerce who sponsors every year, the VFW, Finn Creek,” she said. “Working with these key local partners. We have a LREC grant this year to support some of the work, so that’s a big deal, and just local sponsors, people really step up every year.

“I think that the Finn Creek partnership is another thing, we’ve done that since 2020, so that’s a covid silver lining that ended up working out that year and then we realized what a good fit it was,” she continued. “Not only because of the space at Finn Creek is so great, but it’s such a perfect fit with the Kalevala, it just made so much sense. Prior to that, we had partnered with some Perham businesses, which was great too, and I liked giving to another community, but this fit with Finn Creek was just too perfect to change that, so that’s been a really nice addition. And the VFW has been a great partner too and we love performing out there.”

As a “labor of love,” the Pageant supporters are a key element as Roder emphasized.

“It takes a whole community for something like this to happen,” she said. “It amazes me every year people just show up in different ways. It’s just another one of those NY Mills events where everyone comes together and it feels really good to know that we have such a supportive community, so I just want to thank all the local businesses that donate, sponsor, the people that show up and the families that participate.

“I just love how everybody comes together to support it,” she continued. “We’re really grateful for all the support.”