This workshop invited children to participate in a production of the play “Joseph’s Boat,” an original adaptation of a Cape Cod folktale from Elizabeth Reynard’s “The Narrow Land: Folk Chronicles of Old Cape Cod.” The protagonist, Joseph Metcalf, is Falmouth, Massachusetts’ second minister. Much of the detail in this funny and touching tale can be traced to historic facts from the lives of some of Falmouth’s first European settlers.

For this project, Jacek Zuzanski designed and built eight rod puppets, called kukielki in popular Polish folk theatre. To date, the show has been successfully produced at four Cape Cod libraries, the Cultural Center of Cape Cod, and at the John Wesley United Methodist Church in Falmouth. These productions required 10 to 16 rehearsals of 2-3 hours each and each involved 4 live actors and 8 puppeteers, aged 8 to adult.

This workshop is available for further production.