Nearly a dozen schoolyards, soccer pitches, football fields and city parks across Vermont will transform into performance spaces next month as Burlington’s Flynn theater presents its fifth annual installment of Playing Fields. The free, family-friendly community spectacle combines art, theater, dance and puppetry.
This year’s shows feature Plasticiens Volants, a French company of street performers who use inflatable puppets to tell their stories. Sea Fantasy: The Pearl plunges audience members into an underwater seascape populated by friendly creatures such as squid, hermit crabs and seahorses, who help a lonely pearl explore life beyond the limits of her shell.
Now in its 50th year, Plasticiens Volants, based in Graulhet, France, has won international acclaim for its breathtaking inflatable puppets. Born out of the Paris student uprising of 1968, Plasticiens Volants — literally, “flying artists” — draws from the aesthetic of Europe’s centuries-old traditions of Carnival, processions and public festivals, which in the 1960s and ’70s were incorporated into the continent’s social justice movements. Founder Marc Miralès, who died last year, believed in “creating spectacles in the sky [and] telling stories above our heads,” said Sonia Kozlova Clark of Unicycle Productions. She has worked with Plasticiens Volants for years to bring its performances to communities around the U.S.
Vermonters may see parallels to the work of Bread and Puppet Theater of Glover, which is famous for its expressive papier-mâché puppets. Though its aesthetic is very different, the Plasticiens Volants troupe has a similar rebellious streak and work ethos. Company members construct all the puppets themselves and always collaborate with local artists, builders and performers in the communities they visit. In fact, the Vermont performances will feature some Bread and Puppet members.
“They’re part of that same approach to art, as being something of the people and for the people,” Kozlova Clark said.
Central to Plasticiens Volants’ shows are its awe-inspiring and sometimes massive handmade inflatables, composed of hand-painted lightweight fabric similar to boat sails. Unlike the floats in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which are tethered to handlers on the ground and simply drift along, Plasticiens Volants’ puppetry involves intricate manipulation with sticks and ropes to tell stories and interact with audience members, who are encouraged to touch them as they move through the crowd.
“The stage and the audience are one and the same,” Kozlova Clark said.
Though all the shows in Vermont are free and do not require tickets or reservations, the production is neither cheap nor simple to put on, Kozlova Clark said. Nine of Plasticiens Volants’ 30 company members will travel to Vermont. The company, which doesn’t always travel with the entire troupe, had to cope with significant increases in the cost of U.S. visas as well as helium — the latter always a significant production expense but one that has skyrocketed in recent months due to the war with Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
While Plasticiens Volants was born of social movements, Kozlova Clark noted that the 14 Vermont shows, which will include some on Montpelier’s Statehouse lawn on September 19 and 20, are not politically themed.
“This show is very playful, peaceful and magical,” she said. “And that’s what we all need right now.” ➆
This article appears in August 26 • 2026.
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