Monday, September 19th; 18.00 h; Zagreb Dance Centre; 5+; 40 minutes; nonverbal
The Visitor is a touching and subtle story about friendship, loneliness, fears, and monotony, written by the German author and illustrator Antje Damm. The story was translated by Tina Mahkota and published by Zala publishing house in 2015. In the same year, the story received the German award for youth literature, the Leipzig Reading Compass; in 2016 it was awarded the Slovenian Golden Pear Label and last year it received the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books award.
The artistic design of the book features inspiring dynamic illustrations which are in fact tiny three-dimensional scenographies or models, created by the author with the use of glue, colours, and collage. The director Ivana Djilas and other co-creators used the stop-motion technique to further elevate the images from the book and create a theatre magic that almost needs no words.
LJUBLJANA PUPPET THEATRE, REPUBLIC OF SLOVENIA
Ljubljana Puppet Theatre is the main Slovenian puppet theatre staging puppet and drama performances for children, youngsters, and adults. Its predominant target audiences are children and young people. The public institution was established in 1948 (as the City Puppet Theatre) and has been based in Mestni dom in Krekov Square since 1984. In its work, the theatre builds on the hundred-year tradition of Slovenian puppetry. With the establishment of the Museum of Puppetry at the Ljubljana Castle, the LPT officially became the caretaker of this precious, century-old heritage. The theatre manages five regular and several smaller, occasional venues. At these venues, which offer seating for approximately a thousand people, it produces fifteen premieres a year and is visited by around 110,000 spectators. Ljubljana Puppet Theatre also pays special attention to cultural and artistic education in all its dimensions and at the national level cooperates in the endeavours to strengthen the standards and systemically place quality cultural content in the programmes of educational institutions.
