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The Serpents Fly at Sundown
January 16 @ 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
On Thursday, January 16, as the sun sets over downtown Austin, Cassandra, a giant lantern serpent will rise and glide across the Texas Capitol Grounds in The Serpents Fly at Sundown, a free, large-scale outdoor performance by Glass Half Full Theatre.
Equal parts performance, ritual, and civic gathering, The Serpents Fly at Sundown invites the public to witness illuminated, hand-built serpent puppet— stretching over 26 feet long—as they move through the Capitol landscape at dusk. The performance will begin at sundown, transforming the grounds into a site of shared wonder, reflection, and collective imagination.
The creative team includes project lead Khristián Méndez Aguirre and puppet builder Aurora Kenyon with a story co-developed with Caroline Reck and Gricelda Silva. The puppeteering team includes Marina DeYoe-Pedraza, Veronica Pomata, Antonio Medrano, Diana Guizado and more puppeteers to be announced at a later date. The Serpents Fly at Sundown responds to Central Texas’ history of environmental disruption—floods, extreme heat, winter storms—by introducing a mythic figure that appears when the impossible has already happened. Méndez Aguirre trained with world renowned giant lantern puppeteer Andrew Kim (influenced by the Joint Stock tradition of giant puppets), and giant puppet puppeteer Anne Cubberly at the Eugene O’Neill National Puppetry Institute.
“These serpents aren’t symbols of doom,” says Méndez Aguirre. “They’re harbingers—figures that arrive when communities are already living through change. They ask us to gather, to look up together, and to imagine what comes next.”
The performance is the culmination of months of community-based workshops across Austin –in partnership with Creative Action–, where residents and local elementary schools helped design and build smaller lantern creatures that will accompany the serpent in the performance. Built from bamboo, paper, and light, the puppets draw from global lantern traditions and local climate data, blending myth, science, and civic space.
The Serpents Fly at Sundown builds on Glass Half Full Theatre’s 15 year history rooted in innovative puppetry and socially engaged work, including Walk with Amal. “We are thrilled to be back at the Capitol, after our very dynamic event Walk With Amal in 2023”, said Founder and Co-Artistic Director Caroline Reck. The event is free and open to the public, and designed for audiences of all ages. Attendees are encouraged to arrive early and dress for cool evening weather.
Presented by: Glass Half Full Theatre
Project Lead and Ecodramaturg: Khristian Mendez Aguirre
Puppet Co-Builder: Aurora Kenyon
Story co-developed with Caroline Reck and Gricelda Silva
Lead Puppeteers: Marina DeYoe-Pedraza, Diana Guizado, Antonio Medrano, and Veronica Pomata.
Additional Performance by Gricelda Silva
ABOUT GLASS HALF FULL THEATRE
Founded in Austin in 2011, Glass Half Full Theatre creates original works of puppetry and physical theatre that address urgent social and environmental questions through imagination, craft, and community engagement. The company’s work has toured to more than 30 states and has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jim Henson Foundation, the Texas Commission on the Arts, the City of Austin, and others.
