Czech puppet theatre – Reflection of 2011

Eleven artists from the Naïve Theatre Liberec travelled to Hong Kong in early April, where they were to perform their famous Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves as part of the International Art Festival. All performances of the show in Hong Kong had English and Chinese subtitles.

The puppet of Hurvínek celebrated its 85th birthday on 2 May. It was created in 1926 by woodcarver Gustav Nosek as a surprise for Josef Skupa. Skupa gladly received the puppet and started giving it parts it his Spejbl shows. Hurvínek appeared for the first time on the stage of the Amusement Settlements theatre in Plzeň on 2 May 1926, in a production of Rudolf Nešvera’s The Respectable House. In addition to regular performances for children and adults in the S+H Theatre, Prague, Hurvínek also appears on many CDs, DVDs, four TV series for children and even a 3D film. Hurvínek has already twice appeared on a postage stamp and even gave his name to a minor planet, Asteroid 29472, discovered in 1997 by a Czech astronomer.

Visual artist and performer Petr Nikl presented a premiere of his black and white melodrama titled I Am Your Hare in Archa Theatre. This autobiographic time capsule was inspired by the blow-up toys of his mother, Libuše Niklová. Petr Nikl described his latest piece as a “musical stage portrait of time and the echoes of memory”. This chamber melodrama was created together with last year’s exhibition titled The Toys of Libuše Niklová in the Applied Design Museum and with Petr Nikl’s exhibition titled A Dialogue with Mother in the Hvězda Villa. Both exhibitions were presented in Paris starting June this year. Libuše Niklová became the very first Czech artist to present her work in the prestigious Musée des Arts Décoratifs in the Louvre.

The Forman Brothers Theatre’s successful Freak Show (Obludárium) moved to Paris at the end of May, and to no ordinary location at that. From 24 May to 2 July, the Forman brothers had their two-storey tent for 146 spectators directly on the famous Champs Élysées Avenue. The production has been shown not only in the Czech Republic and France, where it had its premiere, but also in Spain, Italy and Belgium.

On 20 May, the alternative stage of the Theatre of Puppets Ostrava had its ceremonial opening. Its building was designed by three architects, Petr M. Hájek, Gabriela Minářová and Bronislav Stratil during 2009. The five-storey building, connected to the original theatre by a two-storey walkway, was designed as a large, towering Campanille. Its dominant is the first puppet astronomical clock in Ostrava, showing every two hours three pairs of figures – the King and Queen, Devil and Angel, Death and Jester – while playing music by Vlastimil Ondruška and using a spectacular star clock. The new alternative stage was opened with the Czech premiere of The Fairy Smaller than a Poppy Seed, written by the Slovak musician and theatre artist Martin Geišberg. The alternative stage allows a closer contact with the audience, which is the fundamental principle of this new fairy tale.

On 5 June, the Radost Theatre, Brno, opened its Museum of Puppets shaped like a seafaring ship, concluding the “The Magical World of Animation – Museum of Puppets” project that started in 1999. In addition to the construction of the Museum, this project also included modifications to the theatre building. The whole building is now nautical-themed, and the reconstruction also positively affected its sections such as the recording studio, atrium, warehouse and ateliers.

On Saturday 18 June 2011, a performance of the Japanese shadow puppet theatre group Kakashi-Za concluded the international festival of professional puppet theatres with shows for the youngest audiences titled Mateřinka “11”, organised by the Naïve Theatre Liberec. The festival took 5 days and saw the performances of 14 Czech and 5 foreign groups who specialise in this sort of theatre work. Two awards (for the best performance for children aged 3-5 and for the best music) received the Hungarian-Belgian performance named Ha dede created by Kabóca Theatre and De Spiegel. The next two awards (for the best production for children 5-7 and for the best scenario) belonged to the performance Golden Goose of Buchty a loutky/Puppets and Cakes Theatre. Prof. Petr Matásek won the prize for the stage design created for the performance James and the Giant Peach (Naïve Theatre), his son Jan Matásek for the music used in the performance My Very First Encyclopedia (Minor Theatre). In addition, one prize won Jakub Folvarčný and his performance The Wolf and Hunger for creative authorship and acting.

The publishing house of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague published a study by the leading expert on the history of early Czech puppetry Alice Dubská: Journeys of the Brát and Pratte Puppeteer Families Through Europe of the 18th and 19th Centuries, a detailed chronicle of the family of the first historically recorded Czech puppeteer, Jan Jiří Brát. Some chapters of the book have already been published in the Loutkář magazine (in 2008–2009).

Starting this September, there were several changes at many important positions of Czech puppet theatre life. The new director selected for the Museum of Puppetry Cultures in Chrudim is theatre director Simona Chalupová Pěničková. The Department of Alternative and Puppet Theatre of Prague DAMU also has a new director – after Professor Josef Krofta, the position will be held by theatre director Jiří Havelka.

On Friday, 16 September, a gala opening was held at the town hall in France’s ‘puppetry metropolis’ Charleville-Mézieres for the exhibition Marionnettes An Zero (Puppets since Year Zero), which was organised by the Arts and Theatre Institute as part of the biennial World Festival of Puppet Theatre (16–25 September 2011). The exhibition was not the only event showcasing contemporary Czech puppetry – as part of the programme, Alfa Theatre staged its production of James Blond, Víťa Marčík Theatre put on its version of Snow White, and Liberec’s Naïve Theatre performed their Little Swan Lake. The Forman Brothers Theatre gained enormous attention with its Freak Show/Obludárium, and the company’s tent was set up close to the site of the exhibition and bravely took in the rush of domestic and foreign festival spectators. The exhibition Marionnettes An Zero was prepared by the curator Nina Malíková and Antonín Maloň who was responsible for preparing all the technical aspects of the exhibition.

In 19–23 September in Ostrava, the 9th biannual Spectaculo Interesse international puppetry festival competition organised by the Theatre of Puppets took place, with participation of artists from 13 countries. The professional jury gave the main prize to The Queen of Spades of the Grodno Oblast Puppet Theatre. Other prizes were awarded to Neville Tranter and Duda Paiva; the jury also gave honorable mention to Jiří Jelínek for his The World According to Fagi.

The President of the Czech Republic presented a Medal for Contributions to the Nation in Culture and Art to the founder and long-time director of the Black Theatre Jiří Srnec during the celebrations of the national holiday of 28 October. Jiří Srnec, who celebrated his 80th birthday this year, still performs, and last year created a new show for the Laterna Magika.

From 4–6 November, the 21st year of the Přelet nad loutkářským hnízdem / One Flew Over the Puppeteer’s Nest festival took place. As every year, top Czech professional and amateur puppeteers and alternative theatre performers came to Prague to present their best shows; over three days, shows of 11 puppeteer groups or solo performers were presented, both for children and adults. Before the last show, the winner of this year’s Erik award was announced: the playful Back to Bullerbyn by the Športniki Amateur Puppet Group and the Maribor Puppet Theatre. The show is very loosely based on Astrid Lindgren’s book The Children of Bullerbyn (published in English as The Children of Noisy Village) and the creators call it “the first Czecho-Slovenian puppet soap opera”. It tells the story of what happens to the village of Bullerbyn after the children grow up and who is actually behind the success of ABBA.

The festival also hosted a Friday scholarly seminar on The Current Situation and New Perspectives and Trends of Theatre Tertiary Schools, co-organised by the Department of Alternative and Puppet Theatre of the Prague DAMU. In the seminar, there were papers by researchers from the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, Poland and Hungary.

On 19 November, the auditorium of the Švandovo divadlo, Prague, hosted grand celebrations of twenty years of the original theatre group Buchty a loutky, an independent alternative puppet theatre for children and adults founded in 1991 by graduates of the puppetry department of Prague’s DAMU. Since then, they have produced 49 shows for children and adults, many one-time projects in alternative theatre, specific visual art events and also have had some experience with puppet and animated film.

Kateřina Lešková-Dolenská and Nina Malíková