Montenegro is Haff the Man

I remember the day in 2007, that we visited Chicago puppeteer, Michael Montenegro. He actually doesn't live in Chicago, but in the beautiful leafy burbs, his home surrounded by trees and wooden sculptures. And then I haven't heard much news from Michael, until I read that he has gone back into his exciting symbolist theatre with two new pieces, Haff, the Man and Falling Girl. Theatre Zarko is said to revive the meaning and value of Symbolist theatre in Chicago. The Chicago Theatre Blog discusses the fact that the show provides the best of both worlds. It contains all the immediacy and risk of live theater, while integrating light (Scott Lee Heckman), music (Jude Mathews), sound, projections (Ellen O’Keefe) and movement to almost pristinely pure cinematic effect. Even the performers’ stately movements – setting up between scenes – take on a ritualistic element within the overall performance, replicating the economy of modern poetry. Nothing is wasted. Every word, every sound, every puppet’s shaky gesture or turn of the head generates deep and lasting poetic impact. It runs until 21 November.

Haff, the Man: written and directed by Michael Montenegro
Falling Girl: co-directed by Ellen O’Keefe and Michael Montenegro  Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes, Evanston, Chicago, USA. You can watch a preview of the production here!

Improbable 'Panic' comes to Sydney Opera House

After provoking Sydney audiences in 2006 with The Hanging Man, UK-based Improbable Theatre returns to Australia with their latest production Panic. You can catch a preview of the show here!

Drawn from personal stories and current obsessions, this tale of love is Improbable with puppetry, pratfalls, aerial feats and the longest list of self-help books ever announced on stage. Suggested for mature audiences, Panic embodies a childlike imagination blended with an adult’s wistful meditation on love, sex, life and death. Conceived as an improvisatory vaudeville, the production represents a return to intimate scale by the freewheeling troupe whose talents helped collaborate on the international hit Shockheaded Peter and Philip Glass’ opera Satyagraha.

PuppetryNews subscribers can buy tickets for the special price of $20 + booking fee. (Use the promo codes FRINGE when booking online or call the Sydney Opera House Box Office on 02-9250 7777).

Barking Spider launches new show

Opening in Melbourne, Australia tomorrow is a brand new production by Barking Spider.

“Dispatch” is about a puppet character 'Sorrel' a little girl who has died and is unable to realise it.
“Dispatch” is ethereal and timeless in feel. A single narrative line is peppered with weaving mini-narratives that are born of each suitcase as Sorrel discovers them. “Dispatch” runs for approximately one hour and is suitable for teen and adult audiences.

This contemporary and ethereal puppet theatre work, written and directed by Penelope Bartlau, is performed by Bartlau and Justine Warner. The production runs from tomorrow, Tuesday to Sunday 7 February at 8pm, with matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 4pm.
The Venue: 45 Downstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne
Bookings: (03) 9662 9966 or www.fortyfivedownstairs.com.au

New Puppetry Centre for Israel

We were invited this week to visit the new Holon Puppetry Centre which is opening soon in the south of Tel Aviv. The centre will be run by the crazy talented Israeli puppeteer, Ilan Savir, under the auspices of the local municipality of Holon. The new centre has a 200 seater puppet theatre, an international puppetry museum, a school and library facility and will be the first centre of its kind in the Middle East. The centre is the dream of the local puppeteers, which has been to develop a central venue of puppetry and visual theatre in Israel, as well as a venue to host their International Puppetry and Film Festival. In the photo are Ilan Savir (right), Miri Peery, director of the museum and myself.

New Visual Theatre Production from Israel

Three Desires and Silence - I was invited by a friend to check out a new visual theatre production performing in a theatre in Tel Aviv this week. Three different episodes were woven together to create a mad, sensitive show. In each episode, the actress-puppet relationship is used to powerfully reveal an inner conflicted reality, that is concealed. From amongst objects and furniture emerges an internal force that can no longer be restrained. In the depth of a wardrobe, a shy, suppressed woman, unexpectedly meets a rude, inhibited character who drives her beyond herself. Seated in front of a letter desk, are a puppeteer and her "shoulder puppet". Two woman at a deadlock . For all their physical proximity and attempts to connect, they are doomed to fail.
A childhood memory unravels through personal objects and a human – doll. An autobiographical nightmare, a circle not broken, a music lesson, all come to life as beneath the sweet tale another story emerges and a secret is whispered. The production was created and performed by Yaara Goldring, Maayan Resnick and Yael Rasooly in English. I would strongly recommend this to any festival producer. For further information, you can contact the company here!

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!

NEW MONSTER WEBSITE LAUNCHED

At last, the new website for our upcoming documentary film and live theatre production, 'LOOKING FOR A MONSTER' has been launched.

‘Looking for a Monster’ is the search for Hanus Hachenburg, a gifted thirteen year old poet and writer in wartime Czechoslovakia, whose life was tragically cut short.

Hachenburg was a prodigal poet and writer. In 1943, while a thirteen year old prisoner in the Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp, he wrote a puppet play, We are Looking for a Monster, but it was never performed.

In 1999, puppeteer and filmmaker Gary Friedman discovered Hanus’s play in a Jerusalem archive and fulfilled a pledge he made to the spirit of Hanus, by producing the play for the first time in 2001. After six years, the documentary film is finally being edited and the live production is being reworked for the international stage. Monster will opn internationally in 2008. (International Copyright registered) Check out the site for more information!