Related stories:

• Video from last year's FestiFools

• Photos from last year's FoolMoon

When the 7th annual FestiFools parade takes over Main Street on Sunday, April 7, spectators will see—among the numerous, huge papier-mache puppets—a Dali-esque melted clock face (with Mr. Potato Head-like Velcro parts); an old-fashioned camera that takes pictures of the crowd; Marie Antoinette carrying her head (complete with a Marge Simpson-like wig, with a birdcage inside); a pole-dancing giraffe; and a giant baby.

“I’m not sure what the baby’s 'statement' is, but it’s a 10-foot baby with a head the size of a truck tire,” said FestiFools creative director and U-M instructor Mark Tucker, whose students design and build most of the parade’s biggest pieces. “The student doesn’t know where this is going, either, but that’s part of the fun, too. As the piece evolves, they start to take a different kind of ownership over it, and then they let the creative process dictate what the message is going to be.”

Tucker’s students determined this year’s FestiFools theme, “TimeFoolery,” “so it will all be pieces having something to do with their take on time and what time means,” said Tucker.

But what happens to the puppets after FestiFools?

“They go to puppet heaven,” joked Tucker.

Really, though, many of them get stored in the various nooks and crannies of the FestiFools studio.

“At least we have them in our back pocket,” said Tucker. “If all my students mutiny on me or something, we could still put on the event. But it’s interesting. They’re inanimate objects, and unless someone gets under them and really brings them to life, they don’t make that magic connection. … But they also keep my students motivated to make new and better ones, hopefully.”

The quirky, annual public art event that is FestiFools, which invites community volunteers to take part, too, has become so popular in recent years that in addition to Sunday’s FestiFools parade, a Friday night FoolMoon event (April 5 on Washington Street west of Main) features community members’ luminary sculptures on parade, followed by community party with live music.

“We’d always wanted to do nighttime event,” said Tucker. “We just thought that the puppets would look really great lit up at night. … Then we were creating some luminaries for another venue and another event, and it fell through. But we’d done all the R and D on it, so we had the know-how of how to create these cool sculptural luminaries, so we decided to put the two ideas together and create this wholly separate nighttime event, and to invite the community to come in and create them.”

For this purpose, the FestiFools studio hosts public workshops each weekend in March.

“FestiFools is largely created by University of Michigan students, with help from the community, and FoolMoon is 99.9 percent created by the community,” said Tucker. “They come to the workshops, or they’ll buy the kits we have for sale. I’ll tell you, the first year (in 2011), you just don’t know if it’s going to work or not. And then 3 or 4 hundred of these (luminary sculptures) showed up in front of Grizzly Peak, and we thought, oh, wow, they really did go make them.

“… It’s fun to be at the workshops. It’s fun to watch people who say they’ve never been creative before make something, and then take it out onto the street the evening of FoolMoon and get accolades from the spectators. I think that’s really enriching for people who thought they couldn’t make anything.”

Just as FestiFools has a theme, FoolMoon does as well: food—or in FestiFools parlance, “foold.”

“We’re getting lots of big pieces of food items, and carryout boxes, and silverware, and large heads that chomp food,” said Tucker. “We’ve connected with couple of groups—this is an interesting town—we have a lot of techie groups and clubs that are just into making interesting things with circuit boards, and servo motors and stuff. So they have come down to the workshops, and they’re going to be integrating lighting systems that talk to each other during the event. And one has these remote control motors that are going to make these giant masks, the mandibles and the eyelids, move. … It’s really low-tech meets high-tech, because the luminaries are just wire and tissue paper constructions.”

Last year, nasty weather did little to dissuade community members from turning out, so it seems that Ann Arbor has wholly embraced FestiFools/FoolMoon weekend—that it is, in fact, a match made in giant puppet heaven. But why?

“Someone sent me YouTube videos of the Ozone parade,” said Tucker. “It took place here in the mid to late ‘70s. Apparently, there used to be a homecoming parade, and there was a year they decided they weren’t going to fund it, and so this renegade group of students and community folks got together. And if you see those videos, it’s much more outrageous than anything we’ve done. It’s really inspirational. But I also feel like the seed was already here. … I don’t think what we do would work in every community.

“ … But (Ann Arbor) is just a really smart town. So when you can go out for even an hour and make fun of yourself—dress up and show your foolish side—I think it’s liberating. And I think that resonates with this town. We can be really serious and smart, and we also know how to have a good time.”

Jenn McKee is the entertainment digital journalist for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at jennmckee@annarbor.com or 734-623-2546, and follow her on Twitter @jennmckee.