Behind-the-scenes: Oregon Hill Halloween parade marks its 20th anniversary

Uriel Najera (left) joins other volunteers to prepare puppets at a DIY space in Richmond for All The Saints Theatre Company 20th Halloween Parade, 'A Funeral March for the American Dream.' (Story and photos by Max Posner)

As the sun set and the mercury dropped on Friday evening, Richmonders and out-of-towners alike descended on Monroe Park to take up homemade puppets and floats and march down Laurel Street through Oregon Hill for All The Saints Theatre Company’s 20th Annual Halloween Parade.

Started in 2006 by All The Saints Theatre Company founder, Lil Lamberta, the grassroots parade has continuously grown, from a march of 60-or-so friends in its first year to an event that draws thousands, many who declare it their favorite event in the city.

Each iteration of the parade is structured as a funeral march for an idea or issue decided on by All The Saints. In its first year the parade was a Funeral March for Prometheus, the Greek God who stole fire from the gods and gave it to mortals, and thus was sentenced to an eternity of torture. Having a funeral march for Prometheus was a way to put the tortured god to rest and remind people that they have the fire necessary to create the world they want to live in together.

Lil Lamberta, founder of All The Saints Theatre Company and its Halloween parade, paints the head of a puppet at a DIY space on the Southside.

This year’s theme was ‘A Funeral March for the American Dream’

“…who made that American dream and who is it always serving? You know, like the nuclear family, it was serving like 1950’s hetero and gender norms and big business, you know what I mean? And then, you know — but that dream wasn’t everybody's dream….So how do you show that in a puppet show?” Lamberta said.

The puppets are the centerpiece of each parade and shout out differing messages through their varying forms — calling out systems of oppression, remembering those lost to historical struggles, or simply serving as an abstract representation of a feeling. “That’s the magic of puppetry; you can make a forest and call it hope.” said Lamberta. Each year’s puppets are a mix of new ones and others from parades past.

Puppets and other homemade art to be featured in All The Saints Theatre Company's 20th Annual Halloween parade line the walls of a DIY space on the Southside.

The prime source of inspiration for the use of the larger-than-life icons is the Bread and Puppet Theatre, a nonprofit political theatre company based in Glover, Vermont. It was founded in New York City in 1963 by Peter Schumann, a German immigrant whose family fled the country during World War ll. Since its founding, Bread and Puppet has utilized its platform to comment on issues including unfair housing policies in New York City and the Vietnam War.

After graduating from college with a BFA in theatre performance, Lamberta joined Bread and Puppet and toured with the company before needing to move back to Richmond. Moved by the work, Lamberta wondered how she would maintain the practice back in Virginia. With the support of Schumann, the Halloween Parade was born, utilizing the Bread and Puppet Theatre tradition of ‘cheap art,’ an anti-capitalist practice born in resistance to art as a thing of expensive materials and museum collections.

On the Thursday before Halloween, volunteers were hard at work in a DIY space on Richmond’s Southside, cutting bamboo, sewing cloth and painting on cardboard scavenged from dumpsters and bike shops to make new puppets for the parade. Uriel Najera, the town clerk of Guilford, Vermont, was one of the volunteers hard at work in the gutted commercial space.

Uriel Najera paints a paper mache head of Saint Óscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador who was an outspoken advocate for El Salvador’s poor, but was assassinated in 1980, at a DIY space on the Southside.

Najera met Lamberta during an apprenticeship with Bread and Puppet in 2017, and they hit it off. After traveling to Richmond to assist with the parade, Najera was sold on the tradition. As they painted a paper mache head of Saint Óscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador who was an outspoken advocate for El Salvador’s poor, but was assassinated in 1980, they expanded on the pull of the parade.

“...it’s the beauty of resistance through collective movement, is just so powerful to me. And, I just remember my first Halloween Parade being, like, we're building all these puppets. There's so many puppets. More puppets than there are us…It's like the power of, like collective revelry, the power of like collective angst, the power of, like, collective screaming and collective dancing, collective crying. It's just so powerful. And I think it’s what humbles us and reminds us that we are collective creatures. Like, we're not meant to be alone.”

As dozens of puppets and banners were unloaded from a U-Haul truck at Monroe Park and people started to select the ones they would ferry down the parade route, musicians engaged in last minute rehearsals. Each year since its founding, No B.S. Brass had led the parade. As the parade has grown, more musicians have joined in. Other musicians this year included those playing Brazilian percussion music from Carnival in Rio de Janiero and old time and bluegrass.

Volunteers unload puppets and art from a U-Haul truck for All The Saints Theatre Company's 20th Halloween Parade in Monroe Park.

Arguably the best part of the parade is how it brings Richmond together, gets people out of their rooms and phone screens and into the streets to engage in a creative act collectively. If the puppets are the candles, the people in the streets are the flames.

Participants in the Halloween parade march down Laurel Street.

Bystanders on South Pine Street pose for a photo as the Halloween parade passes.

Musicians including members of Richmond band The Hot Seats perform while marching in the Halloween parade.

“And the beautiful thing about the Halloween parade is, like, anybody can be involved. I mean, unless you’re Nazi, then f*** you,” said Parker Galore, one of the founders of Gallery 5 and RVA Mag who has been leading the front of the procession and organizing it with Lamberta since the beginning. Wishing all of the bystanders along Laurel and Pine Streets a Happy Halloween, volunteers like Galore keep the tradition afloat by coaxing bystanders to get out of their shells and join the revelry.

Halloween parade participants march through Oregon Hill.

As kids and adults alike experienced the delight of this year’s parade, the sorrow for the current moment in history was apparent, from a headstone marking the final resting place of the American Dream to a bloodied white picket fence, grief walked hand in hand with joy.

A participant marches in the Halloween parade with a headstone for the American Dream.

Parade participant Bentley, dressed as Lady Liberty, poses for a portrait.

Kat Smith and Rey Etra met each other at a Bread and Puppet event in Vermont in 2023 and became fast friends and pen pals. This year Kat made an 8 hour drive up from Lexington, Kentucky and Rey took a plane ride down from Brattleborough, Vermont to be at the parade. The two friends caught up in Oregon Hill’s Linear Park as the parade wound down, and mused on the magic of the event and the power of the web of community building that it provides.

“It’s like, we're not gonna survive without [community], you know? Like in a deep way, I feel like," Etra said.

"And not just because of, like, this particular political moment. But just like actually because we have to take care of each other in like, a real way. And even though a lot of people here maybe are here for the night and leave — I think it does kind of encourage the sense that you can actually just get together with a bunch of people and make something happen….And I felt extremely encouraged the first time I ever witnessed radical theater and puppetry and community building around it…It definitely changed my life.”