WORLD PUPPETRY DAY - 21 March 2007

Union International de la Marionnette has declared Wednesday 21 March 2007 'World Puppetry Day'. It is the day to celebrate world puppetry, visual theatre and being a part of this incedibly powerful art form. We will be in Barcelona tomorrow and will hit the streets here!

The UNIMA 2008 Festival and Congress, taking place in Perth, Western Australia 2 -12 April 2008, will launch their 'World Puppetry Day' with The Million Puppet Project during which schools and organisations throughout Australia will be building puppets to create the world´s largest puppet display - to promote both the day and the forthcoming world festival of puppetry in Australia. If you have a puppet handy, take to the streets tomorrow to march in solidarity with puppeteers and artists all over the world that believe that this magical metaphor can promote world peace and unity!

Report from Australia just published:

Launched on World Puppetry Day, the Million Puppet Project, an initiative of Perth’s own Spare Parts Puppet Theatre, is a year long event culminating on April 6, 2008 that invites people from around the world to make and send a puppet to Perth to create a display for a new Guinness World Record - The World’s Largest Puppet Exhibition - at the Perth Concert Hall.

Launched by the Western Australian Minister of Tourism, Culture & the Arts, Sheila McHale, the Million Puppet Project will generate national and international interest in the lead up to the UNIMA 2008 :: 20^th UNIMA Congress & World Puppetry Festival being held in Perth from April 2 to 12 in 2008, for the first time outside the Southern Hemisphere. An ‘Olympics of puppetry’, UNIMA 2008 will include International theatre performances, conferences, exhibitions, workshops and master classes with over 1000 delegates joining hundreds of thousands of local residents in a feast of puppetry arts.

Harvie Krumpet and his Oscar-winning creator, Adam Elliot were named as International Ambassadors of the project. Mr Elliot said he and Harvie were very proud to be ambassadors and urged everyone to get involved. “Puppetry is a much loved and important part of the entertainment industry,” he said. “We want everyone to make as many puppets as possible. Let your imagination run wild, get those creative juices flowing and you never know you might end up winning an Oscar!”

Artistic Director of Spare Parts Puppet Theatre, Philip Mitchell said that the event was a celebration of the imaginative genius of the puppetry art form. “Puppetry throughout history the world over has played an incredible role in our creativity,” he said. “It is a universal language shared by all ages. We are thrilled that Perth will be the centre of such a creative and fun-filled event. Already we have expressions of excitement from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas – the count is on!”

UNIMA (Union Internationale de la Marionette) is a member of the UNESCO family of NGOs. The Million Puppet Project is supported by Lotterywest, the City of Perth, Department for Culture & the Arts, Events Corp and Perth Convention Bureau. Spare Parts Puppet Theatre won the bid to host the 20^th Unima Congress and Puppetry Festival (UNIMA 2008) when the event was held in Croatia in 2004.

Spare Parts Puppet Theatre is Australia’s leading puppetry company creating entertaining and inspirational theatre for young people and their families. In 2006, the company celebrated 25 years of creating Australian Puppetry works of excellence that entertain, inform and unleash our imagination.

For further information, see here!

Virgin Offerings in Sevilla

Sevilla was an extraordinary place to hang for a few days! The only hassle was constantly getting lost, taking the wrong long winding passageway back to the hotel, which usualy lead to the opposite side of the city. But one dark night we found this fantastical pub, with statues of many virgins and strange religeous relics scattered all over the exotic bar. We were completely blown away when the waitress, dressed as a gorgeous nun presented us each with a red carnation. Never a bad habit, I say! Next day we were on the train to Granada, the most incredible place yet...

Sevilla, Spain

We are in Sevilla in southern Spain, where the warmth of the people are only equalled by the beauty of the architecture. We spent two days in Corboda, before getting the bus to Sevilla. The old cities in this region with the incredible mosques and churches in the same structure, one overtaking the other, showed the times when the struggle for power eventually became the Golden Age of Spain when Jew, Christian and Moslem co-existed in harmony, before the Inquisition and expulsion in 1492, around the same time as Columbus was doing his re-discovery of America.
We are heading towards Granada tomorrow and then up north through Madrid to Basque country. It´s all a great adventure before beginning our workshops in Europe in a few weeks!

First stop Barcelona

Sharon and I finally left South Africa on Thursday and flew to Spain, on the first leg of our international workshop tour for 2007. We are staying in the mountains, outside Barcelona with artist and master puppeteer Joan Baixas and his family (see my last visit in 2005) . I feel some travel in Spain is important before heading on to Israel in a few weeks. Joan and I have been discussing new visual concepts for my new 2008 production of ´Looking for a Monster´. Tomorrow we head to Girona, a small town not far from here.