Through the slit

This year started with a responsible travelling and keeping our promises to visit our far away friends. We spend four cool (literally) days in the Norwegian capital, Oslo. Our guide and great host Petra showed us, apart from loads of galleries and museums, also her own work. Petra is a contemporary artist specialised in sculpture, installation art, and she also makes beautiful rings!! We couldn't miss one of her great installations, which she made in the part of Oslo called Grünerløkka. 

Following the river and the map, you can find five objects, or as the author calls them - small observatories. If you look through them and combine them with the distant location you'll get a funny and interesting result. Like, a little guy climbing a chimney of the nearby brewery or jumping into a waterfall.

Unfortunately two of them were already missing and also it was too dark (and cold) to take a proper picture, but here's a small taste of it. Go, find them yourself, the little hidden acrobats in Oslo.

Find out more about Petra P. Petrikova on http://www.trikratpe.com/

Yes, I do!

Once upon a time last summer, we were busy marrying our friends! :) No, they were marrying each other, we just got a very responsible task, to prepare their ceremony. And we did. We prepared for their wedding an extraordinary, superspectacular and original puppet show! We wanted to tell the people their story, but we also wanted to entertain them and make them part of the fun. The solution was to have a priest as a narrator. Our priest puppet is the most sympathetic, a tiny bit senile character. 

The story of Frederik and Rebecca - the marrying couple, was not as simple as you think! We went deep down to their past, and introduced them as children, and slowly we followed the line of destiny, which brought them together! We had a concert of Rebecca's band 'Tigresse', we met Frederik's dog! We even went with them on their first date and than on their snowboarding trip to Austria! We yodelled and watched Frederik making the ring for Rebecca with his own hands! (that really happend!) We had to fight with the greedy Sméagol, who wanted to steal it (that also really happened!!). And at the end, we witnessed their big promise to stay together forever in good or bad ...

Such show happens only once, but that's what makes it even more special and of course it makes the couple's day unforgettable ;) 
Let's see if there will be some more weddings this year, where Kukulu could bring some puppet - fun!

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!