The January decision made by Stonington Public Schools to eliminate George Orwell's "Animal Farm," a cautionary tale warning against the dangers of totalitarianism, from its eighth-grade core curriculum was one that riled a lot of residents and newspaper readers. One of those readers was Derron Wood, artistic director of the Flock Theatre in New London.

"I couldn't believe what I was reading. I had to read the story over to make sure that I hadn't read it wrong," Wood says, referring to a column by David Collins in The Day about the decision. "When stories like this, especially George Orwell's stories, start being eliminated or banned in a community, that's always a red flag."

"Animal Farm," which tells the story of a group of animals who take over the farm that they live on from their human owners with the hopes of a free and equal community, is widely considered one of the most famous political allegories in history. The story, which is based on Joseph Stalin's betrayal of the Russian Revolution, ends with the pigs who lead the farm becoming a cruel tyranny of their own.

And although "Animal Farm" was not banned from the school (teachers are still allowed to use the material for supplementary purposes), eliminating the story, in Wood's opinion, takes away pertinent life lessons from students — namely, the opportunity for civil discourse, which, according to Wood, can be readily exercised while studying the book.

"All I could wonder was why they were taking the story out of their curriculum now? I knew that I wanted to do something," he says.

That something, Wood says, ended up as an idea that will make staging an "Animal Farm" production anywhere in the country easy, accessible and, most of all, inexpensive.

"A lot of people read the news and ignore it. Some read it and say, 'What can I do?' For me, I know how to put up productions quickly and inexpensively. So, coming up with this idea was my way of being able to address this issue," Wood says.

Wood's idea is simple: anyone will be able to construct the animal-head puppets needed to depict the characters of the story by using pre-designed templates that will act as a stencil of sorts and simple household items such as scissors, tape and cardboard. Wood and his friend Heather Asch, a puppeteer who has three Emmys for her work on "Sesame Street," are in the process of designing four templates that will include the heads of pigs, cows, horses and sheep.

After buying the rights and royalties to the $75 Samuel French stage version of "Animal Farm," performers can play the characters with the animal head-masks and read directly from the script, allowing for the production to be staged nearly anywhere, Wood says.

"You'll be able to perform it in your living room. You can perform it in the park. You can even perform it in Stonington," he says with a laugh.

The point of bringing this story into communities across the nation, Wood says, is to promote the meaningful communication of ideas, or civil discourse, something that Wood feels is in decline.

Performing and discussing "Animal Farm," he says, is a way to re-introduce that idea, which he describes as an inherent "working component of democracy."

"George Orwell himself said that this story is a fable of modern times. You can teach so much with it, the Russian Revolution, you can teach metaphor, you can analyze today's political climate," he says.

"For example, open up any newspaper and read anything that is coming out of our present form of government. Sean Spicer, for example, who is a fellow alum from Conn College — some of those press briefings were laughable at best," says Wood. "They contradict themselves, and they say that everyone else is lying. I see there is a lot of that also in 'Animal Farm.'

"That's why it is so important that this story is taught in schools," he continues. "But it can also be something that communities can take advantage of, too."

The idea to easily disseminate the story nationally, however, didn't come immediately.

His first reaction to the news was to hold his own Flock Theatre production of the story, an idea that he posted on his Facebook page.

"The response was overwhelming," he says. "People were coming out of the woodwork to offer their support and any help that they could to make this happen. I knew that this was something that mattered to a lot of people."

It wasn't until shortly thereafter that Wood was working on a puppet head with Asch for a separate school play that he realized he too wanted to make animal puppet-heads for his own production.

"Puppets have always been an incredible form of political theater. Historically, they have been used to make political points as far back as ancient Greece. The Guy Fawkes mask, for example, is used for this point. So it made sense to use puppets for this story, too," Wood says.

Once Wood saw how Asch could quickly craft such puppets with simple household items, the spark to Wood's idea was ignited.

His first pig-heads for the characters of Squealer, Snowball, Napoleon and Old Major look like something out of a dystopian nightmare — stark, bleak and haunting — despite being made out of just scrap cardboard, glue and saw dust.

"They are simple but creepy. Using the saw dust to cover the exterior of the heads made them look brown and drab, which is exactly what we were hoping for. And using saw dust, for example, is easier than painting," Wood says while displaying the folded interior of the mask held together by masking tape.

Wood hopes that, by the end of the summer, the templates will be ready for mailing, which he says he will send to anyone in the United States, with the hope that they will be free, aside from shipping costs.

He anticipates holding his own formal production of "Animal Farm" starting this fall but also hopes to organize a traveling production that can visit communities across Connecticut — one of which may very well be Stonington, he says.