Professor Catherine Ming T'ien Duffly and Cecile Szollas ’25 are using the procession to champion community, playfulness, and joy.
By Bennett Campbell Ferguson
July 28, 2025
As an artist who specializes in community-based performance, Professor Catherine Ming T'ien Duffly [theatre] knows the value of play.
“It’s really important for adults, too,” Duffly says. “And we stop doing it at a certain point. Especially now, we really need to find moments of joy and play—and together, not just secretly in our houses.”
Duffly’s philosophy of play inspired her to create the , an annual community procession through Sellwood that unites Portlanders through jubilant congregation and puppetry to build joyous, lasting connections.
“It’s connected to combatting isolation and bringing people together through artmaking,” Duffly says of the parade, which took place this past June. “But I would say that even more than that, it’s about wanting people to remember that we all are creative beings—and that being creative together is a really great way to build community.”
The Everything Under the Sun Parade began two years ago and has steadily grown since, taking on organizations lhygiene4all—a hygiene hub for unsheltered residents of Portland's Central Eastside—as .
This year, the nurturing aura of the event was expressed through its gargantuan puppets (including hands emblazoned with the words “hope,” “heal,” and “help”) and the zeal of attendees, some of whom expressed their enthusiasm by playing saxophones.
“For me, it’s a really important aspect of culture-building—especially in Portland—that we make space,” says Cecile Szollas ’25, who has helped organize the parade with Duffly since the beginning. “[We] use art and theater and community gathering to create culture in our individual groups—as well as with our community partners.”
A biology major who has worked for Reed Sustainability, Cecile prepared for the parade by leading puppet-making workshops at Llewellyn Elementary School. These sessions contributed to the parade’s wondrous menagerie of puppet characters, from a uniquely ornate crow to an adorably scary spider.
“I was really wowed the day of the parade, seeing a ton of people from those workshops bring their giant creations,” Cecile says. “They were able to bring something really beautiful and artistic.”
After two successful years, the Everything Under the Sun Parade will continue, expanding its community partnerships and staying true to its exuberant, open-hearted sense of fun.
“Joy is so important to sustain us in dark times,” Duffly says. “It can be really easy to despair and feel hopeless. There’s so much work to be done on many fronts, so I think that finding moments of joy will be really important for us over the next several years.”