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THE QUARTER TO LAUGH AND CRY

Every day miracles happen in the "Puppet Quarter". This festival project has already existed for four years. Today it is impossible to imagine the festival without puppeteers from around the world.

The Belarusian Theater "Lialka" is the venue of the “Puppet Quarter” Project. Today, two performances were presented for the festival viewers – the “Bremen Town Musicians” and “Cheerful Dorofey”. “Cheerful Dorofey” is a stage version of the tale by a famous Russian writer Nina Gernet. The performance was directed by Viktor Klimchuk, artistic director of the theater, Honored Artist of the Republic of Belarus. His creative imagination and subtle understanding of a child’s psychology make his productions very professional, having a subtext, irony. “Cheerful Dorofey” is an interactive show. Little spectators happily helped the caterpillar Dorofey and his mistress Alenka to do good and save Dorofey from the sly Fox. Maria Kovaleva (Alenka) improvised much as it is impossible to guess the reaction of children. Actors Olga Makhankova, Olga Lazebnaya, Anna Stepanets, Alexander Kozlov literally get the audience worked up.

The new production of the “White Ship”, based on the story by Chingiz Aitmatov, was shown in Vitebsk. It was directed by Oksana Dmitrieva and performed by the“Est”(“To Be”) youth animation theatre (Ukraine). The play was written almost 50 years ago, but, unfortunately, people have not become better and kinder. This sad story, the young Ukrainian actors, together with the Oksana Dmitrieva and Natalia Denisova, performed on the verge of reality and fairy tales. The performance is created for both teenage and adult audience and is very thought-provoking.

In the mornings one could enjoy a cheerful interactive performance “Barmaley” of the Rivne Regional Academic Puppet Theater (Ukraine), directed by Marina Nazarenko.  And again, there were laughter, cries and joy when the characters  of the familiar fairy tale (Irina Shelvitskaya, Evgeny Shevchuk, Andrey Okladov acting)  were recognized.

Russian text by Vera Medvetskaya.