Current issue: 4/2023

The festivals that we deal with in this issue are Prélet nad loutkárským hníznem, Ostrava’s Spectaculo Interesse, the new Brno Festival of Joy and also the biggest puppetry event, the World Puppet Festival in Charleville-Mézières, which had an interesting Czech participation this year. The director Linda Dušková prepared the production Exit B in cooperation with the students of the Charleville school ESNAM!

The production of the co-production Czech-Slovak project of the DRAK Theater and the Bratislava Puppet Theater The registered association of Czech and Slovak puppeteers presents: Kašpárek a zbojník, which won the festival Grand Prix at Spectaculo Interesse, then won the Theater Newspaper Award in the category of puppetry and art theater and this year’s Erik Award also belongs to her. The creators agreed to publish the play/script on the pages of The Puppeteer magazine.

And while we’re talking about the awards: of course, we couldn’t miss the Thalia Award winner, who this year was Jiří Kniha for his great performance in the production of Five Times Around the World from the repertoire of the Tygr v tísni troupe.

In this issue, we also say goodbye to this year’s free series of portraits – the fourth scenographer of our series is Jitka Nejedlá, jubilant amateur ensembles are Pilsen’s Bouda, Prague’s Jiskra and Horaždovick’s Tyjátr (Rolnička), and the cycle of portraits of master carvers is concluded by Miroslav Trejtnar, author of the wonderful publication Technologie lutek (Part 1 – marionettes on wire and threads), in the creation of which (not only) The Puppeteer proudly participated this year. We will then symbolically return to the cycle dedicated to nomadic theater actors, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Matěj Kopecky from “Hradec Králové” from an ancient puppet family.

This number also concludes this year’s puppet tour in Asia. In the last post, we will introduce puppet theater in Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore and especially Vietnam. Today, the local water puppet theater is in full swing, and if you want to get to know it more closely, read not only the very detailed study by Veronika Pospíšilová in this issue, but also the publication Theater Born of Water, which was published on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition of the same name in Museum of puppet cultures.