Small naughty puppets are impatient by nature. Once every two years they visit Uzhhorod for the Interpuppet Festival, which is famous among puppeteers throughout the world. The organizers of this festive event for children — festival director Oleksandr Turianytsia and Uzhhorod’s Bavka Puppet Theater — are fond of their fairytale wards. This year the organizers decided not to subject the festival participants to a creative test: Interpuppet is usually held as a competition with an international jury headed by the renowned puppeteer and director Leonid Popov. Instead, the Bavka Theater organized a gala show to allow the puppeteers to stage their finest productions.
The four-day festival flew by in a trice. Children filled the hall two, even three times a day. Sometimes they did not understand the language, but what was happening on stage was eloquent enough, so what they saw was more important than what they heard. This year’s Interpuppet Festival featured various styles and techniques. However, all the productions attested to the puppeteers’ devotion to a trend that has been evolving over the past couple of decades, the so-called live foreground. Like before, the puppeteers tried to “offend” their puppets and outplay them. But even though the puppets are deprived of their rights, they know how to put their advantages to the best use.
These advantages were demonstrated in a professional and talented way in Eternal Youth and Immortal Life by the Papusi Puppet Theater from Baia Mare (Romania). The director chose a vivid image-bearing approach, so ordinary objects among which the characters exist turn into something totally different, embodying an entirely different world. For example, open umbrellas decorated with grass, flowers, and garlands are transformed into forest hillocks over which the heroes travel. On their journey they come across forest clearings teeming with mushrooms and berries that appear from the wings and are put on the actors’ slippers. The young audience was delighted to see a funny hare made up of two parts that were placed on the actor’s feet. He was a droll figure, jumping around with his bifurcated body. Demonstrating the possibilities of the creative imagination, the brilliant play-like format of the show was a model creative approach, one in which the creators have a clear understanding of the puppet theater’s task.
The Mohilau Puppet Theater’s production of Hohol’s short story “Vii” was based on the traditions of the vertep puppet theater. The puppeteers masterfully exploited the possibilities of the puppet show box, transforming it into a wagon with turning wheels, a village filled with small houses, and a church where Khoma Brut, a student at the Kyiv Brotherhood Monastery school, is destined to experience his mortal terror.
Uzhhorod’s Bavka Puppet Theater, the host of the festival, staged Beauty and the Beast, based on the well-known tale “The Scarlet Flower.” The actors’ play recreated the medieval atmosphere and romantic spirit with the aid of knights and beautiful maidens. As though captivated by the dramatic skills of the Uzhhorod actors, director O. Zhiuhzhda, turned the entire action over to them, limiting the puppets to supporting roles. The Uzhhorod theater demonstrated its excellent dramatic possibilities in their new work, the musical Aeneid, which is based on Ivan Kotliarevsky’s poem and staged by Ya. Stelmakh. This production is meant for an adult audience and uses spectacular dramatic, audio, visual, and special effects, with lots of music, interesting choreography, and of course, Kotliarevsky’s wise poetic lines. The actors performed the roles of the gods of antiquity and indicated the subtexts of situation while skillfully handling the puppets: Aeneas, the Cossacks, and Dido and her friends.
Khmelnytsky’s Diven Puppet Theater took the audience on a journey to the fairytale world of the ancient Netherlands with its production of Prince Charming. The stylized puppets, national coloration, and the smallest details of the stage props and production design combined to produce a colorful vista to delight the young spectators while teaching lessons of wisdom and kindness.
Of course, the festival could not do without the obligatory fairytale characters, including Cinderella, who arrived with the Targovishte Puppet Theater from Bulgaria. In this production fairytale and real-life events are whimsically intertwined. The gorgeous puppets, clad in luxurious costumes, created the best festive atmosphere ever to be expected from a play. The Pinocchio Puppet Theatre of Zemun (Belgrade) brought its production of Karius and Bactus. The play is about an open mouth inhabited by two nasty little creatures by the name of Karius and Bactus, who do their best to create new cavities in the rows of white teeth. This unpretentious puppet show is designed to teach children to brush their teeth, and the plot is emphasized by the presence of the formidable Tooth Drill and the uncompromising Toothbrush. There is a happy ending: all the cavities are filled, the teeth are white and even, and the nasty, dirty little creatures have to look for another child with bad brushing habits.
The Window, a production staged by the Maska Puppet Theater of Rzezsow (Poland), is built on the principles of shadow theater. Two actors recounted the entire story that was unfolding outside the window, a screen on which various combinations of objects, people, and animals were displayed, thanks to the actors’ imagination and skilful hands. All this was done with a sense of humor and extreme inventiveness in demonstrating the possibilities of shadow theater.
A whole sea of puppets was reflected in the jubilee parade of Interpuppet productions, with its problems, achievements, creative quests, discoveries, and magical force, one that is capable of surpassing even the fantastic effects of modern cartoons. Cartoons are necessary, but there are no substitutes for live here-and-now contact between children and puppets. A puppet show has practically unlimited possibilities. Creatively speaking, they can do anything: recreate unbelievable moments of visual fantasy and charge every scene with life-giving energy. Children believe — and will continue to believe — in this invented, unreal world, and the puppet theater conducts them to adult life. By offering and modeling their picturesque universe in miniaturized form, puppeteers allow children to form a picture of the great adult world.
