In the decades since Creede Repertory Theatre founded its KID Show as a way to give young adults in its Colorado community a creative summer outlet, they’ve staged a promenade-style outdoor production, a movement-based piece, a sci-fi musical, a stage-combat-heavy romp, and Shakespeare adaptations. This year, said CRT education and engagement director Jenni Harbour, “We were like, ‘Okay, what next?’”

The result is Eureka: Stories of Discovery, for which around 20 students aged 10-18, in collaboration with local puppet troupe Dragoncillo, have created original stories with hand and shadow puppet techniques for a show that runs July 24-26. (Dragoncillo was also commissioned by CRT to develop a full-length piece as part of CRT’s new-play festival Headwaters.) “It seemed like something that our audiences and our community had not been exposed to before,” said Emily Van Fleet, CRT’s artistic director and interim managing director.

Jason Yancey, Dragoncillo artistic director and chair of Modern Languages at Grand Valley State University, said he imagines the summer program as a tight, three-week version of a semester-long puppetry class he teaches at the university. For that class, he has students research and read literature, then write their own plays and build their own puppets before going to elementary schools and performing.

“For me, the class is entirely about confidence,” Yancey said. “I have heard many students come back and say, ‘I learned how to come out of my shell through this,’ or, ‘I learned how to be comfortable making mistakes through this.’ The best part about puppets is confidence. It’s going to set up this shield: The puppet will take all the heat, and I can stand behind it and be more creative than I normally would.”