World Festival of Puppet Art, Prague- Day 1

Well, it's currently day two of the festival (there's a few hours before the next show, so I'm taking some glorious alone time in the hotel to charge my phone and do some writing), so I will review the trip up to this morning. I arrived, after a ridiculous roundabout day of travel(Edinburgh to Glasgow, Glasgow to Manchester, train to Manchester airport, flight to Prague- and yes, I do know there are straight flights from Edinburgh, so don't ask) into Prague airport a little before midnight. I was swept up by a lovely Czech girl with a lime green "Puppet Festival" sign and very little English otherwise. I was then informed that we were also picking up some other people, who turned out to be the Korean puppet group whose flight had been delayed three hours. We were piled into a van and headed for the town centre, where I was dropped at a tiny hotel before the driver whisked away the puppeteers to their accommodations. I grabbed a key and a map from reception and went looking for the room that I shared with my friend, who is also a previous professor of mine. I finally got my stuff organized, pyjamas on, and crawled into bed when the humongous cup of coffee I drank in the Manchester airport (4 hours earlier) kicked in- needless to say, I got very little sleep that night and when the alarm went off at 7 the next morning, was not feeling particularly capable of a day chock full of shows and socialising.

We were running late that morning, so I grabbed a banana and a roll (and thought wistfully of last night's coffee) and headed with my friend to the other hotel, where we would be meeting the rest of the jury and the festival organizers. There are only four jury members (which unfortunately presents the opportunity for a split vote) who attend all of the shows and award the prizes at the end of the festival. My job was to assist my boss, who was one of the jury, in reviewing the shows, and to take my own notes and photos on everything. Upon arrival to the hotel, I learned that we would be taking the subway to the first show, because it was a ways out of the town centre. I also found that we had extra time to grab coffee and breakfast at the hotel before leaving. I was introduced to a few folks, some of whom already knew my professor, and some of the people from the puppet companies. After some disorganized attempts to head off, we finally left for the train station, and then to the theatre where the first performance had just started. The theatre was completely unmarked- there was no way to tell it was even a theatre, and I was grateful to be with a large group of people, some of whom seemed to know what they were doing.

The first show was put on by the Polish company "Tecza", and was a combination of traditional puppetry and modern movement. The puppets were beautiful, detailed wooden puppets, which looked very traditional in style, but the puppeteers were dressed in costume and often came out from behind the puppet stage and influenced the characters. The story was an old fairy tale called "Fern Flower", and had some wonderfully creepy moments, such as a scene where the protagonist is walking through a haunted forest and these scary looking puppets descend on him, stomping against the wood in rhythm with the music as he tries to outrun them. The set was designed so that the wooden planks that were the ground could be raised and rattled, and even flipped to show creepy looking brambles rising from the ground in the forest scene. The play was entirely in Polish, so some of the Czech kids had a few giggles at the Polish words which apparently mean dirty things in Czech.

The second show was the Dwish Theatre company, from Belgium. It was basically one woman who used an amazing set an finger and hand puppets, along with sounds and whistles, to narrate the passage of seasons, time, and life. The show was geared mainly towards kids, but was pretty much a universally magical performance. The stage itself transformed in various ways through the seasons, the squirrels and birds had babies, and the bees pollinated flowers and helped turn them to apples. Absolute magic. I loved this show! (Though I've loved all of them so far!)

The final show of the evening was a three person company from Czech, called Cirkus Zebrik. They performed a series of stories revolving around a town called Beroun, using different styles, props, and characters. They all played musical instruments, acted, jumped on top of things, mingled the occasional English phrase or explanation with the Czech, and coerced participation and even a bit of money from the audience. The stories were full of dark humour, humourous ghosts, death, drowing, and lots of bursting into song. They were so much fun!