Mark Safford

Mark SaffordCo-Director, Halloween 2010
Section Designer, Halloween 2009

Mark Safford, one of the founders of Barebones, has been foundering for the last sixteen years. He has created with the support of many great hearts, heads, and hands; thirty foot tall electric lantern puppet, a seasonal snake over a hundred feet long, a rickshaw rabbit, fire breathing bulls (with the Cook Danger Stick, patent pending.) A thirty foot swan boat showering sparks, giant crow puppets, and a series of giant Id-ish baby heads the largest being forty feet in circumference as well as hundreds of masks, pole puppets, bike puppets and the like. His favorite puppets are the Legendary Tooth Tube, The triumvirate T-Rex, the bouncy Long Gargoyles, and the McCaw butt goblins.

Mark or his puppets have appeared at the Ordway, the Red Eye, In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre, Theater de la June Lune, the Minnesota Opera Co., Bedlam Theater, and in many public parks and riverside squats for the Barebones Halloween Extravaganza of which he was a co-founder and active supporter and participant for the last fifteen years.

When not at BareBones, Mark is usually working for Art Start, East Side Arts Council, Leonardo’s Basement, In the Heart of the Beast, or the Ordway’s Children’s Festival.