FirstWorks announces festival schedule

By Rebecca Keister
PBN Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE – FirstWorks, a Providence nonprofit arts organization, has announced the schedule for the FirstWorks Festival: On the Plaza in 2012 on Sept. 29, officially kicking off the ninth annual FirstWorks festival.

Performers at the festival, to be held on Kennedy Plaza downtown, will include Project Bandaloop, an aerial dance troop that has performed from the cliffs of Yosemite National Park and the Seattle Space Needle, the Spanish Harlem Orchestra, the Squonk Opera, a carnival-essque six-piece art-rock band/performance troupe, and Papermoon Puppet Theatre, which muses mixed-media productions to create works that explore identity, society and Indonesia’s recent past.

FirstWorks is collaborating with the City of Providence, Providence’s Downtown Parks Conservancy and 18 other cultural organizations on the festival funded in part by a National Endowment for the Arts “Our Town” grant. The objective of the initiative is to re-envision Kennedy Plaza as a vibrant town square.