Message for World Puppetry Day

UNIMA General Secretary, Jacques Trudeau has posted a message by the renowned theatre director, Robert Lepage, written especially for World Puppetry Day on 21 March 2010. Versatile in every form of theatre craft, Robert Lepage creates and directs original productions that shake the dogma of classical stage direction to its foundations, especially through his use of puppetry and new technologies.

“Like many people, I was profoundly affected by the earthquake which has recently devastated Haiti. Looking at the images constantly relayed on television and on the web I asked myself, among all the mediums of the performing arts, which would be the most effective for expressing the human dimension of such a cataclysm? Which medium would best evoke compassion without descending into mere pity, to inspire solidarity without being moralizing, and which would be best able to provoke in our own body an echo of the physical pain of the wounds and amputations?

In fact, I asked myself how one could transpose onto a stage not only the grief of the Haitian people, but equally their resilience which both moves and inspires us at the same time?

It seemed to me that the puppet would be the best medium to convey this tragedy. Its powerlessness, its vulnerability, but in equal measure the force of its purity and its innocence combine to create a link both intimate and unique with the spectator. Such solidarity probably arises from the major advantage it holds over the human theatre and the cinema: the actor plays a part, the puppet is always true.

In contrast to the actor, the cruelties done to the puppet are not feigned and when its strings are cut, when it is beaten, ridiculed, humiliated, ill-treated or dismembered, it never complains. It is repaired, re-pasted and once again it is on its feet, as good as new.

This truth endows the puppets with a magnificent power, since they seem at the same time to be capable of facing up to the outrages of destiny and to possess the courage needed to rebuild a world in ruins."
Robert Lepage, Quebec

To view some of Lepage's work, take a look here and discussions with him here!

UNIMA - 80 years old and still growing

Eighty years ago, on 20th May 1929 a group of like minded people from Bulgaria, France, Yugoslavia, Germany, Austria, Romania and the Soviet Union came together in Prague to form an organisation dedicated to the art of the puppet.
UNIMA (Union Internationale de la Marionnette) in a short time built itself up from a small circle of friends into a world organisation. It is notable, from the point of view of cultural history, that UNIMA was the first international theatre body.

Over the past eighty years, UNIMA has had a rich and varied history, which took the organisation through Second World War, where many of its activities were taken underground in Europe, through the cold war into a completely new era. The strength of UNIMA was and will continue to be rooted in the fact that it was always able to rise above these problems.

During the eighties and nineties, there was an explosion of new Centres and members in all the continents beyond Europe, and these new Centres have resulted in new territorial groupings, for example the Asian, African and American Commissions, intended to facilitate communications and deal with new responsibilities. After forty years in Prague UNIMA changed its base for the first time: the General Secretariat moved to Warsaw, Poland, where it remained for eight years until 1980, when the headquarters were transferred to Charleville-Mézières, France. Charleville was already the site of a world festival and soon became the home not only of UNIMA but also of the Institute International de la Marionnette.

Since 1929, when UNIMA was founded, the world has changed and so has UNIMA itself. It is now a recognized and a respected world organisation. The spectrum of UNIMA activities has expanded to a great extent. The significance of this is associated with the far greater importance which attaches to puppetry now.

The puppet can nowadays be found in every genre of the contemporary performing arts including the mass media. In theatre, film, television, the world-wide web, celebration, ritual, education, and healing, like all art, a means of bringing peoples closer together and of fighting intolerance and violence.

UNIMA's long tradition does not stand in the way of its role as a dynamic force. It must, however, always remember the humanist ideals of universal friendship and understanding contained in the statement that introduces its constitution. UNIMA is responsible not only to its members but to all whose lives have been enriched by the spirit and beauty of the puppet. Viva UNIMA and viva the Power of the Puppet!

World Puppetry Day 2009

Today is World Puppetry Day!
What on earth are you doing to celebrate this special day declared by UNESCO at the beginning of the century? I had to look far and wide to discover what was happening, because by the looks of it, nothing seems to be happening right here in Australia. In my search I discovered a special screening of Handmade Puppet Dreams by Heather Henson at the India International Centre in New Delhi.

UNIMA Greece is organising a three-day Festival of Puppetry in Athens, culminating in a giant parade on Sunday 22 March. Another program is being held by Ishara Puppet Theatre in Delhi, so it looks like India's taking the lead thus far! If you participated in any such events please report back and I'll include them in another report soon!

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!