Thursday, September 21st; 10.00 h and 11.30 h; Cultural Centre Travno venue; 30 minutes; in Croatian
The Rijeka City Puppet Theatre introduced a new theatrical form on the Rijeka scene, which iscomingback after the pandemic years. It is experience theatre for babies and the youngestchildren who are stillcrawling, who have just started to walk, and children in diapers. It is aform of performance art on theborder between a theatrical performance with animationelements and an art-sound installation inspace. Therefore, it is a non-standard performance, acombination of artistic, performance and musicalsensations that form a new artistic space inwhich the child directly indulges in the experience and basicperception of art together with theperformers. By creating and performing the play, we tried to offer babies appropriate and tailor-made theatre thatprimarily breaks with the conventions of standard theatre and calls forinteractivity, which is the mostaccurate and appropriate approach for the youngest audienceswhen it comes to their first encounterwith theatre, and for some with art in general. The showtries to capture the attention of the youngestviewers in a relatable way with various sensoryattractions, through anunusual experiential-sensual-sensory journey of this subtle, almostmeditative, yet rhythmically and dynamically staged performance,which is also interesting forparents. Therefore, the play sensitizes the youngest as new viewers from anearly age, primarilythrough the theatre as a space for experience, imagination, creation, and play.
RIJEKA CITY PUPPET THEATRE
Rijeka City Puppet Theatre was founded in 1960, it operates as a cultural institution of the City of Rijeka, staging puppet performances from national and world literary heritage, as well as contemporary dramatic texts for preschool and school children, as well as adults. It also introduced a repertoire for babies (interactive theatre) and storytelling theatre, and holds educational and artistic puppet workshops. It aims to open puppetry to other media; it launched a competition for young authors and it supports young puppeteers through various forms of cooperation. The theatre, its employees and associates received more than 170 professional awards and audience awards for their art. They held visiting performances all over Europe, in Mexico, Japan, Iran, China, Turkey, etc. Thanks to the theatre’s employees, the city of Rijeka very successfully organised the UNIMA Congress and World Puppetry Festival in 2004.
Since 1996, the theatre has been organising an international festival called the Puppet Theatre Review, a yearly puppetry festival in Rijeka that brings together the best national and foreign puppet shows and boasts a rich artistic and educational programme. It is one of the organisers and programmers of the Tobogan festival launched as part of the European Capital of Culture programme.
The Rijeka City Puppet Theatre is one of the main project hosts of the Children’s House flagship implemented as part of the Rijeka 2020 European Capital of Culture project. It has remained active at the Children’s House to this day as one of the programme partners.
The Rijeka City Puppet Theatre is a member of the world associations ASSITEJ and UNIMA, the European Network for the Diffusion of Performing Arts for Early Childhood – Small Size and the regional network Od malih nogu.
