Have yourself a merry little puppet

What a weekend! Our christmas show, Sonate for Lulu was part of the pre-christmas fever in the Ghent's shopping mall Zuid. I was affraid, that there might not be enough childern, because by this time the parents go shop alone. But no worries!! The rainy weekend was just inviting for some indoor activities, and surely many parents appreciated our show, to entertain the kids, while still getting the last Santa's secrets ;)

With the most beautiful snowy decoration of the shopping center, our show, was just like in a winterwonderland.

And now christmas can start for us too ;) 

The 1900 catharsis

     Last week, on a foggy friday evening we discovered an interesting cultural place, offering plenty of remarkable events. Bij de vieze Gasten is a very nice theater place a bit out of the center of town. The people of Ghent probably know it very well, for us it was new.

     We went to see the show of Utlima Thule, one of the best known belgian puppet theatres which is performing for young and adult audience. 
     The production 1900, which we went to see, is inspired by Alessandro Baricco's novel The legend of 1900. 1900 is a pianist, who was found as a new born baby in a box of lemons on an american cruiseship. He becomes a pianist in the boat orchestra and he is an extraordinary player, who is getting to know the world by seeing all the different people during the cruises. 1900 would never in his life leave the boat. 
     We follow his story through the narration of his friend, who is a trumpetist that plays in the boat orchestra. All characters are performed by the two actors Hans Van Cauwenberghe and  Filip Peeters, who is also the designer of the puppets.
     The cozy setting of the stage, good text and good puppet manipulation with gentle humor made this experience one of my personal highlights of the belgian season. 

Mila and the puppets

Mila, as any other cat, loves fish! She keeps constantly harassing those which we have in our aquarium. When she sees the puppet goldfish Gaga, she goes crazy. Yes, even animals believe in puppet theatre! It is quite a paradox, that Gaga's best friend is a cat, who learns to breathe under water, to be able to play with her. In the real world, our real cat would mainly bite her head off... Well, that's why we have fairy tales:) 

Popoty is ready to surprise little children tomorrow in one library. I'm looking forward and I'm glad that Gaga survived the rehearsal!

With puppets from Bali

Almost after a year I am starting to sort out our pictures from the trip to Bali. Except of being very nostalgic I'm rediscovering all those ghosts, wayangs, gods or demons, which we met on our way... For now I picked these four masks. It is hard to say if they are masks or puppets, or both. I hope they will not disturb your dreams with their expressive looks. I'm trying to figure out, who they are. Wikipedia says, that the first one is a lion, representing a protector spirit Barong. He has often two monkeys with him, so I guess that is the one of them on the second pic. But who is the bird and boar, I'm not sure. Oh, I will have to go to Bali again and find it all out! :)

 

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The dog in Middelkerke

(Middelkerke is a small town at the sea. Yesterday, while I was collecting new inspiration in this area, I saw him staring at the moon and thinking. Maybe about his dog days. Or about hot dogs.) 

three creatures I met last week in Vienna and two interesting guys I met yesterday in Ghent

Meeting a fluffy goat (third from the left, first pic) or, mechanical puppets (the one with a hat was opening and closing his mouth) can be sometimes very refreshing. Especially, when there is not much of cultural events going on. Or I just don't have the time/energy/money to join them.  Or I have to work on my own 'cultural events' and I need inspiration. May we have a very inspiring new week!! 

Puppet of the week!

Yesterday's discovery! Belgian theater for kids De Waancel (I don't know what that means)  and their show Erwin Blik in Expeditie Nul. (That means Erwin Blik in Exedition Zero) :) Just watched this video about a man and his friend Basluis - some kind of a flea, or better word is probably "louse" !! A really sweet one! I hope I might get the chance to see the show one day... 

The All Souls' Day in Slovakia

Last weekend we got the chance to visit our family in Slovakia. As an every year tradition, we go prepare the graves of our grand-grand parents and other deceased relatives for the All Souls' Day. We went to Čičmany (one of my most favourite places in the world) and got surprised by snow! We visited the graveyard, but there was too much snow for the decorating of graves and was indeed too cold for it. We just enjoyed a short snowfight, than walked to our cottage, where the lovely slivovica was waiting to warm our bodies from the inside. Hope you had a good holidays, souls ;)

why do I love Vienna

It's been beautiful to be back in Vienna. 

I lived there for three years and evethough I 

never wanted to stay forever, I miss it sometimes. 

There are few things which make Vienna special to me... 

The parks and forest around.

The warm maroni on every corner of the street (in this time of year)

The clean and always-on-time U-bahn

The expositions! There is always something to see.

(this time Nude Men - Leopold Museum till 28 of january 013)

The extraordinary christmas markets. Coming soon!!

after the show...

When the show is over, the kids in kindergartens draw me some pictures. Not always. But if they do, I'm very happy. I already have a huge collection! Here are some drawings from the two previous days. Sometimes they also draw me. It's really sweet to see, how they see me:) 

Popoty at the house of Mr. Proffesor

The cat Popoty and his fish

the gold fish Gaga 

GAGA

Not sure..

Lena and the fish puppet

Popoty returns

And here I go again, after 10 months, visiting viennese kindergartens and entertaining the little ones with my crazy puppets. The story about Popoty is somehow really working well. The kids are so enjoying. The kindergarten teachers too ;) My german is reappearing in my head. 

Three wonderful shows are over. Three more still coming up this week! Exciting and nostalgic at the same time. It is sooo nice to be back! 

On monday my friend Tereza joined. She is the author of the puppets and the stage. And she was spying on the audience during the show. I enjoyed seeing the kids from another perspective ;) Hope you enjoy it too! 

 

DOlls 

the puppets of this week

My blog is sleeping like these sleeping beauties. Well, I didn't see much of good puppet theatre recently, there are no fleamarkets (it is cold i guess)... And I'm more than busy with preparations for the next week trip to Vienna. I hope I won't be too exhausted to post some updates. I'm going to perform in kindergartens with the good old Popoty ;) The blue cat, sad and always hungry. Wish me luck, I didn't speak german for more than six months! Also bis bald, wir sehen uns in Wien! x Alles Liebe!

cards

This week wasn't really a good one. And today wasn't good at all... but I made myself happier with these postcards!

Source here and here!

May the weekend be creative (:

the susprise workshop

This weekend I've got a little surprise. My friend asked me to lead a workshop for children about shadow theatre. He couldn't and needed a substitute. Of course I took over and it was so much fun! Unfortunately we only had one hour, but still we were able to make simple puppets, and experiment a little bit with the light. 

The kids loved it. Especially the magic part of the shadows getting alive. They were focused and really into it. The girls prepared a story inspired by a short shadow theatre show, they've seen before the workshop. The boys brought up to the stage almost compleet Star Wars saga:)

I enjoyed it very much, and here are some results. Enjoy it too!