Wednesday, September 18th; Travno Cultural Centre, Blue venue; 12.00 sati; for adults; in Croatian
Publisher: Academy of Arts and Culture, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Osijek, 2023
The book Puppetry Wonders of the World gives a systematic overview of world puppetry. The author embarks on a journey through the puppet world in a place where it probably all began –Asia, and then continues to Africa, the Americas and Australia, introducing us to different, sometimes contradictory, views on puppetry and the puppet. In doing so, she introduces us not only to the basic characteristics of puppetry of a particular place but also to the religious, philosophical, social and other ideas that lie at their core, which are significantly different from our European interpretations. And this is one of the great values of this book – pointing out the breadth, richness and diversity of puppetry, which, in turn, shows the diversity of the world around us. The author does not approach the puppetry wonders of the world from their perspective but from the one she knows best – our own European perspective. This is the next great value of this book – reading non-European puppetry with European glasses at the same time gives us an insight into the world’s puppetry wonders and enables a comparison with our European wonders, allowing us to learn about Asian, African, Australian and American puppetry in parallel, but also to better understand our European puppetry, its smallness and immense grandeur. Another value is that the author has created a vast collection of representative puppetry, theatrical, historical, philosophical, social and geographical material, turning it into a clear, understandable and transparent text that intimately addresses the reader with personal anecdotes, interesting bits and witty miniatures. Thanks to this ease of intimacy, the text easily gets under the reader’s skin.
