What The Festival, co-founded by Byron Laviolette and Alicia DiStefano, is a four-day event dedicated to the promotion, presentation and popularization of Clown, Puppetry and Drag performance. The festival is the flagship operation of the Strange Maker Collective, which also hosts the annual SPRING THING variety cabaret series.

What follows is the first in an quarterly series of thoughts, reflections and observations on WTF’s journey throughout 2025.

I've often understood capital T "Transformation" in arts organizations to mean the infrequent but seismic tumult of tectonic plates— unearthing long patterns and installing new structures for the foreseeable future. However, the leaders of Paprika showed me their own version of change that looks more like an ocean tide going in and out, shorter cycles that ebb and flow with regularity.