The 11th International Puppet Workshop and UNIMA Council 2014 wraps up in Matanzas
They’ve hit a homer” Manuel Duran, Vice President of UNIMA Council said.
“The greatest in this twenty-year history,” René Fernández, president of the Workshop said.
There was a wolf. And the wolf … Jaam!, ate the duck. Then the boy took him up and tied and pulled the duck out of the belly of the wolf … And the duck was alive! That’s how the small Ernesto Raúl, three years old, sums up the plot of the play Peter and the Wolf, by Sergei Prokofiev, carried on stage by renowned Matanzas Teatro de Las Estaciones Group, one of which became the host of the newly completed International Puppets Workshop and 2014 UNIMA Council. He loves animals. Now he’s waiting to see the giraffe and the huge butterfly of the Gigantería group, Ileana, his mom, told me while trying not to be driven by the child toward the stage assembled under the trees of the Park of La Libertad, where one of the last said works would take place.
For them, as for several hundred spectators who filled every room, public space, cultural centers and theaters where the workshop was held, they were nine days of dreams and fantasy.
Every two years, we are given this unique opportunity, Lisbet Morales says, another spectator who was accompanied by her teenage daughter, who she points at when she says: Since she was four years I bring her, so do the math … If now she turned eighteen they are seven workshops, right? You can almost say that we are experts on the subject. And if not expert, at least we have demonstrated sound judgment. This time there has been much more diversity. Regarding the design of the puppets, for example, they come in all styles, from the realistic to the craziest. We have seen very conceptual and complex pieces, and other minimal drama … In short, I think this time it has managed to please the most varied tastes, although it is clear that the adult theater had more weight…
Gray, Tuyo Theatre (Las Tunas), was classified as precious; while Phoenix, by the Finnish Maria Baric Company, won the audience epithet of impressive. Others that remained in the popular memory were Wooden Circus, Karromato (Czech Republic); Romance in dry puddle, Havana’s Teatro La Proa; The girl and the sea, by Títeres Retablo (Cienfuegos).
René Fernández, national theater award and president of the Workshop was right to express during the closing that this experience enriched us artistically and humanly, and established school and encouragement for creation.
Meanwhile, Manuel Duran, vice president of UNIMA International, described as successful this Council, the first organized in America. Lectures, exhibitions and exchanges fruitful theoretical were viable thanks to a wide organizing team, for whom he had words of encouragement, those in good Puerto Rican language: they hit a homer.
So, among applause, the eleventh Matanzas International Puppet Workshop was closed, and already the next meeting was convened in the spring of 2016.
Imagine, two years and nothing more and nothing less, Ileana, the mother of the great unruly Raul Ernesto, with an expression that reflected no little concern. Tomorrow is going to be other good thing when Ernestico knows that it’s over. I do not know, at least I’ll have to invent something with the pillowcase, but most probably it will never look that a puppet but as a ghost instead
