On a night last week, the animals held centerstage. In the Clarke Center at Mitchell College, Flock Theatre performers were using their actorly talents to bring creatures, in the form of masks and puppets, to dramatic life. There were masks of pigs, constructed with alert ears and textured skin, but of horses, too, and even sheep puppets, built of black socks and white shopping bags scrunched up to look like tufts of wool.

They were rehearsing “Animal Farm,” that 1945 George Orwell classic about totalitarianism, set among a farm full of animals who chase out their abusive human owner, only for a few of the animals to become corrupted by their own growing power. (They also change the name from Manor Farm, as it was called by the humans, to Animal Farm.)

Flock Artistic Director Derron Wood was inspired to stage “Animal Farm” two years ago, when the book became the center of a controversy in the Stonington school system. When the book was not included in a new common curriculum for eighth graders, a longtime teacher was upset, and so were parents; the instructor had taught the book in class for two decades and felt it was an important work.

Wood read about the incident in The Day and felt compelled to present “Animal Farm.” It took a little longer than planned, but Flock is staging “Animal Farm” this weekend and next at Mitchell College, in the thematically appropriate location of the new Red Barn.

Orwell wrote “Animal Farm” as a satire, a cautionary tale about Stalin and his brutal control of the Soviet Union. It deals with the way that dictators can be created and how those dictators ill-treat the people they rule, even as they say their actions are what’s best for the citizens and their country. The character of Napoleon the pig in “Animal Farm” is the Stalin-like figure in the story.

At the time of the Stonington “Animal Farm” controversy, that book and Orwell’s “1984” had reemerged in the upper reaches of Amazon’s list of its best-selling books, as President Trump came into office and Kellyanne Conway coined the term “alternative facts.”

Wood would like audience members to take away from Flock’s show Orwell’s original message, but he’d also like them also to assign their own meaning — what does it mean to them?

“I want the public discussion, I want the public debate — I mean, civilly. But if we get ourselves to a point where we don’t publicly discuss books and we don’t encourage public discussion of books in our public schools, then Animal Farm has won. Napoleon has won (if) there is no dissent, there is no question. I’m not screaming and calling revolution. I welcome differences of opinion in civil discussion. That’s what I think we should be doing in our public schools,” he says.

He adds, “You can look at political, you can look at socio-economic, you can look at any of those angles and find tremendous parallels. I think that’s the beauty of fable and metaphor. The audience can come and take from it what they want.”

Its production style

Flock is using a Reader’s Theater version of “Animal Farm,” which is essentially major chunks of the book, but truncated. It’s supposed to be read out loud while the actors are sitting down, but Flock is bringing it to be more of a performance piece.

“It lends itself so beautifully with puppets and masks and imagery,” Wood says. “It’s such a powerful metaphor for really, I think, everything that’s going on as well as such a powerful metaphor for the history lesson.”

Reader’s Theater style is a vocal performance, with actors sitting down, reading the script. Flock’s production goes beyond that.

Wood notes that when Flock staged Eugene O’Neill’s “Ile,” it was a giant puppet show, with voices coming from offstage and puppeteers performing.

Flock’s “Animal Farm” is “a cross between that and using the masks and the puppets as metaphors for both the symbolism that Orwell (used) but also creating images and tableaus and illusions with them that also speak on a totally different level. That’s really where the fun comes in, especially with such an incredibly talented group, music-wise and performance-wise,” Wood says.

“There’s a spontaneity to it, playing off those impulses that just create a really unique and fun form of theater and can both bring about great elements of humor and then also really poignant pieces of tragedy, which is what I do find in Orwell’s original work.”

In staging the Great Battle of the Cowshed (in which the humans try to take over the farm again but are driven away by the animals), for example, Wood called upon the image of Picasso’s “Guernica.” He says it’s “this incredible cubist painting with distorted images, but the central figure is this horse. There’s a bull in it and other animals. When I was looking at these incredible puppets that Heather Asch created, the image of Guernica that really always strikes me is the horse’s eyes in the center of that painting. I love to work painting imagery into my plays. … This really speaks to me because of the battle of these animals to try and take what’s rightfully theirs, their own dignity, their farm, so to speak.”

Puppetry and mask work

The pig, horse and dog puppets used in the production were designed by Heather Asch, who has earned Emmy Awards for “Sesame Street” and has worked on other Muppet projects. Asch earned a bachelor of arts degree in puppetry from the University of Connecticut. She and Wood have collaborated on a number of projects before.

Wood notes that the plan was to make everything out of trash, garbage and recycled materials. The sheep, as mentioned, consist of socks and plastic white grocery bags. But, he says, “In the hands of an incredible master builder like Heather, they don’t look that way. They are incredibly powerful sculptures that I think speak on so many different levels.”

The play concludes with the pigs and humans sitting around the farm table, and that makes Wood think of the image of the Last Supper — but a reverse version of it.

“My goal in the end is to make the audience feel like they are the ones looking through window at this banquet, and the banquet has been all their work, but it’s been siphoned off, it’s been manipulated, so it’s still this huge class war,” he says.

If you go

What: Flock Theatre’s production of “Animal Farm”

Where: The Mitchell College Red Barn, 629-A Montauk Ave., New London

When: Starts Friday and runs through Jan. 27; 7 p.m. Fridays through Sundays

Tickets: $20, $15 students, seniors and active military

Tickets available at: at Eventbrite and at the door

Contact: (860) 443-3119, flocktheatre.org