Farewell to Perth

The last day of UNIMA 2008 - the world festival of puppetry here in Perth saw the culmination of rushing to try fit in every performance, workshop and lecture, while saying goodbye to friends departing once again to far away lands!

Today we squeezed in a matinée performance of Handspring Puppet Company's Woyzeck on the Highveld, which even after first seeing it 16 years ago, was a festival highlight for me. Woyzeck is an adaptation of German writer Georg Buchner's famous play of jealousy, murder and the struggle of an individual who is destroyed by an uncaring society. The story has been translated into an Apartheid South African setting of the nineteen-fifties, where Woyzeck is represented by a migrant labourer in the gold mines of Johannesburg. The power and poignancy of the puppets, emphasised by William Kentridge's amasing back-projected animation is profound. The company will shortly open at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town after a short season in Brisbane next week.
Video clips of this production and many others from the festival be posted here shortly! Stay tuned...