Festival of Solo Performances for Children 2011, 9th Year

26^th-27th February 2011, Minor Theatre
The Showcase is organised by: Civic Association Xaver

The Showcase of Soloist Productions for Children has invited the best solo puppet-actors, whose work is comprehensible for pre-school and school children, to Prague for the seventh time. This year artists from Great Britain together with those and obviously from Czech Republic were chosen to take part in the festival. The organisers of the Festival purposely aspire to hold an international event, not only because foreign participants bring reflection of various problems, contexts and traditions. Affirmative meeting with creators from neighbouring countries that widens positive awareness of the surrounding nations and has special importance for the specific audiences of the showcase is another dimension of the Festival. Thanks to pleasant theatrical experience the small theatregoers are provided with interest and trust for their future contacts with nationals of other countries. Also the encounter with Czech tradition is beneficial for a child. Czech puppet-making and puppet theatre has renowned and traditional past. It is a big shame that seemingly easy access to live theatre sometimes overshadows the importance of its heritage we should be rightly proud of and cultivate it. We can thus perceive the equal participation of Czech and foreign theatre artists on the Festival as an important contribution of the festival, which fulfils its intention to promote central European integration in both directions – by getting to know own as well as other’s quality.

We are inviting a British story teller Catharine Aran to take part in the 9th year. The performances Snowdown Giant will take place at theatre Minor, Vodičkova street, 6, Prague 1, at 3 pm on 26th and 27th February 2011

The most important guest in 2009 was theatre Iolo from Cardiff, Great Britain. Their performance was chosen at international festival in Welsh Aberystwyth. The company was approved by Jeremy Turner, Director AGOR DRYSAU - OPENING DOORS Wales International Festival of Theatre for Young Audience.

Pros of puppet theatre for children need not be explained. Stage performances address almost all senses of a child, and enrich the little theatregoer in many directions. When compared to drama theatre a puppet has two irrefutable advantages – it enlivens viewer’s fantasy as at the same time cultivates and widens his/her relation to material. Performed as well as told stories reflect important questions of life and help a child to create an intellectual distance from problems that he or she experiences. Aesthetic aspect of performances, humour and harmony contained in performances therapeutically influence children. No performance will be watched by more than forty people, which will ensure unbroken personal experience for everybody. This close contact with art can be fully appreciated especially in our time when children are flood by mass entertainment targeted usually at the lowest level of taste as well as mental scope of the consumer.

Special attention should be paid to creative workshops, which have become a favourite and regular component of the festival over the previous two years. This year the workshops will be lead by a puppet-actress Jaroslava Holasová.. As a teacher from the Primary Art School in Jaromer she has plentiful experience with cultivation of child’s creativity and imaginativeness.  Other workshops will be lead by Jan Hrubec, graduated DAMU, and Hana Jurčíčková, graduated JAMU.

Fifth edition presented

Visual attraction was characteristic for Walny Teatr company from Warsaw, their production “The Butterfly” was through eight poetic pictures touch the secret of the Bible and its legacy. Renowned International House for Children Bibiana from Bratislava presente a fairy-tale “About a Two-headed Dragoness” and a theatre group Piki from Pezinok presented their famous production based on the book by T. Lehenova “About Nine Moons”.

Two-day meeting of theatre-scholars and theatre-makers from the countries of Visegrad Four as well as other countries was another accompanying event of comparable importance. Discussions was opened to the public. Selected participants presented their papers.

Thanks to the previous years of the festival the Festival has established its skeleton audiences. Because of that it adjusts its programme so that the more complex productions are complemented by well-known attractive “hits”. By this strategy the organisers attempt to widen general awareness of yet unknown artists, who would not profit on their first Prague presentation from reputation for being an experimentalist.

The Festival provides space also to young adepts of puppet acting. In 2005 students of Polish Akademie Teatralne z Bialystok presented their work. It was the first presentation of student work from Bialystok in Prague.

First two years of the Festival presented total of eleven productions for children and four pieces for adults. During those festival’s early days the organisers inclined to presentations of so-called family productions, created in order to entertain all age groups. Miroslava Venclová, Kristýna Matějová (presently studying at DAMU), Lenka Košťáková (currently studying at JAMU) a pupils of Primary Art School Na Střezině from Hradec Králové – they all presented their works during the first two years of the Festival. Third year offered eleven productions in thirteen performances and two workshops for children (jugglery and potato theatre. Among the guests of the festival were: director of the festival Puppet Bystrica Iveta Škripková, dramaturg of Bratislava’s Bibiana Eva Čárská, vice-rector of Polish Akademie Teatralne dr. Marek Waszkiel, PhD student of JAMU Adéla Kratochvílová and a student of KALD DAMU Matija Solce. Fourth year presented nine productions in thirteen performances and hosted two workshops for children (jugglery and glove-puppet theatre. Invitations to the festival were accepted by András Lénárt from Hungary (theatre Mikropódium), Katarzyna Rączka and Zofia Dworakowska from Poland, Ivica Ozábalova and Oĺga Panovová from Slovakia. During the festival one meeting for theatre scholars was held.

The Festival of Solo Performance for Children was held in the past two years under the auspices of international non-governmental organisations, the puppetry organisation UNIMA and the organisation of theatres for children and the young ASSITEJ. Fifth year was included among the international projects ASSITEJ International.