The story of Faustina Mercedes, a woamn from the Dominican Republic who kept a raft full of 18 people alive at sea, was the inspiration for "Faustina: Little Angel of the Sea," a puppet show built by En Fuego (Laura Heit, Kate Sheehy and Rebecca Tennison) for the Puppetroplis International Puppet Festival in Chicago. The show traveled from Puppetropolis to another festival (The Radical Cheese Against the Asphaltization of Small Planets Festival, hosted by the Bread & Puppet Theater in Vermont) and En Fuego stopped in Philly along the way and unpacked the show for a performance in Clark Park. Two other puppet troupes also showed up to perform some other pieces on the fly.

Crowds of Puppet Uprising fans and passers-by gathered in the bowl of Clark Park as the three-woman team of En Fuego unpacked their 10-foot tall puppet stage. The show began as a narrated pop-up book-style puppet show in front of En Fuego's booth stage, then floated back behind the curtain for a series of rod-puppet vignettes. "Faustina" ran twice, sandwiching puppet performances by Sarah and Gina (from Philadelphia) and Tank and Ray (from Colombia and California, standing in for poet Taina Asili). "Faustina" is cited by many people who saw it as one of the finest puppet shows to tour the U.S. in the past decade.

Read the story of Faustina Mercedes in this article.
Laura Heit is a professor and puppet filmmaker living in Los Angeles. See her amazing stuff here.
Kate Sheehy is still active in Chicago's burgeoning puppet scene. Read about a festival she curated here.
Rebecca Tennison has performed at Puppet Uprising in 2000 and 2007.
Gina Favano helped to found Fossil Free Fuel near Pittsburgh.
Clark Park is a nexas of community in West Philadelphia. If you can't be there for real, visit it virtually.