Meet our June Marionettes!
- Leah Gaffen
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 7 hours ago
This workshop brought us 11 makers from the USA, Canada, the UK, France, Denmark, Estonia and Australia.
Who was with us? Jesper Kurt-Nielsen made a dancing bear as a companion for Magnus the Magnificent , the stunning weightlifter who Jesper made with us at our Circus Marionette workshop last summer. Chesley Cannon, back in Prague for the 4th time (not to mention the multiple online workshops he's done), made an iconic Czech Kasparek jester with a moving mouth. Ash Appadu came from the UK with a Queen's Trust scholarship supporting British craftspeople. And Sandra Pankin came from Estonia to make a marionette inspired by a Kratt, a mythological creature brought to life with three drops of blood who would fulfill all of his master's wishes. But he had to be constantly busy or he could do something terrible to his master.
Find out more and meet all of our students in this recording of the livestream from the workshop:
One of the wonderful aspects of our June workshops was the number of puppet shows we got to see. We went to almost 20 shows over the two weeks, many of them at two fabulous June festivals. We all visited Plzeň for the Skupa Festival — a city best known for its beer, but which holds a very special place in puppetry history as the birthplace of Josef Skupa and his iconic duo Spejbl and Hurvínek. Two of our students, Rachel Hartmann and Misa Sourour from Chicago, performed at the festival's Puppet Slam and befriended puppeteers from around the world. We also went to Hradec Králové, home of the legendary Drak Theatre and its puppet museum, at one of the country’s most important theatre festivals, the European Regions Festival (Festival REGIONY), which features over 25 puppet shows across the historic city center.
Some of my favorite shows? So hard to choose! But some highlights were:
The Glowing Pickle Bar by the Dutch company the Electric Circus - a 10-minute show held in a tiny tent on the European Regions festival grounds. Puppetry meets automata meets animatronics.
Loops and Hoops www.migac.czby Dominik Migac. A show about totalitarianism and uniformity combining simple paper puppets with multimedia and programming techniques. Dominik, who presented at our Puppet Recipe in May, won an award for best scenography at the Skupa Festival
Metamorphosis by Drak Theatre. The audience was crammed into a tiny bedroom set with the actor as bug wearing a camera attached to his forehead. The projections show the world from Gregor's perspective, with words like cuticle, claws ‘tattooed’ on the actor’s body. A brilliant, simple and deeply moving way of telling this story about a boy's troubled relationship with his father.
Tempo - a performance about time created by Kalle Nio, a Finnish dancer/magician. Rugs unfold, chairs move mysteriously across the stage, actors are suspended in the sky. How did they do it? An audience filled with puppeteers and scene designers was transfixed.
Imaginarium Exhibition - the Forman Brothers have created an interactive, magical, playful world inside a tent with the help of many other Czech puppet makers and artists.
And here more photos from the workshop!
