The Jerusalem Puppet Festival is a longstanding fixture in our cultural calendar.
Every year – with just a one-time furlough during the merry COVID-19 lockdown era – since 1990, the Train Theater has laid on a plethora of quality entertainment and absorbing hands-on activities for folks of all ages. As the summer vacation draws to a close, tiny tots, children, teenagers, and adults have flocked to the Liberty Bell Park venue, which has seen some seismic premises shifting during its long life to date, happily of the positive, more growth-accommodating kind.
The forthcoming festival takes place August 17-21 with a veritable cornucopia of productions and other items lined up over the five days.
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In more recent times, the festival has gradually spread out beyond the – albeit now generously proportioned – indoor confines of the Davidson Theatre building, certainly compared with its original, quaint but cramped train car facility. That gave rise to the venture’s Hebrew name Teatron Hakaron, or the “Train Car Theater.”
The fact that the veteran Jerusalem company sits on a prime location, right next to the aforementioned, thankfully, largely shaded verdant open public space, is a boon too good not to be exploited to the max. Hence, the now annual Tic-tac-toe slot, which this time takes place daily, August 18-21 (5:30 p.m.-8:30 p.m.).
The festival program, devised yet again by perennial artistic director Shahar Marom, reaches out ever more expansively, dipping into numerous artistic disciplines, and spanning a broad range of technological stages of evolution, from primordial wholesome handmade props to acts that incorporate state-of-the-art accessories and special effects.
TIC-TAC-TOE is compiled, as in previous years, by Marom and Dafna Kron. It is designed to provide – primarily – children with an alternative domain within in a safe environment where they can play on the fly and let their powers of imagination and innate creativity lead them every which way.
Increasingly, these days – particularly in the aftermath of the strictures placed on kids during COVID, and, of course, following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks and the never-ending violence in Gaza, with added destructive Iranian and Yemenite intrusions – youngsters and the rest of us are advised, or instructed, to be wary of all manner of possible safety and security concerns. That, by definition, cannot be conducive to allowing children’s still flexible and fertile powers of inventiveness and play to flower. It can have an enduring detrimental effect on the development of the adults of tomorrow and, by extension, on their emotional and physical well-being.
Marom and Kron call Tic-tac-toe “the playground of the imagination,” a delightful and enticing description of a predominantly young children-oriented activity. They say the multidisciplinary outdoor project “invites you all to play multi-age, spontaneous, cross-cultural, and liberating games.” In these trying times, that sounds like just what the doctor, or natural treatment practitioner, ordered.
The al fresco itinerary features an out-sized balloon, a gigantic mountain of toys, and mysterious amicable creatures enhancing the compound’s sonic surroundings. A choral outfit will also be on hand to tempt us into taking part in musical word games. We can also prance around on a giant board game and even assemble a maze of our very own making. That sounds inviting and fundamentally liberating, doing our own thing in a charming spot just down the road from downtown Jerusalem.
Given the current global stance on Israel – at least as the mass media has it – it is nothing short of astounding, and thoroughly heartwarming, that there are a couple of offshore acts in the festival lineup. The Hungarian visitors, the Ladder Art Company, open the festival proceedings at 10 a.m. on August 18, with a second show on the morrow at the same time, with its Awakening work.
The Budapest-based troupe has been staging theatrical offerings for close to a decade, with a declared ethos of promoting responsibility, consciousness, acceptance, open-mindedness, and a supportive way of life through artistic projects.
That’s quite a statement of intent, and one that augurs well for the forthcoming Hungarian showing. Awakening, which will be performed here by Mátyás Marofka and Balázs Kulcsár, is clearly tailored to people of all ages and backgrounds. That admirable objective is facilitated by the fact that the work is of the wordless ilk, hence leapfrogging language barriers.
There will be a smidgen of textual content, which will bookend the show, with a recorded recital of a work by celebrated Hungarian poet Sàndor Weores, in English and Hebrew. Marofka says it took a while before the actors settled on Weores’s poem “Orvény” (“Maelstrom”).
“When we started working on the show, around 10 years ago, we wanted to use loads of poems by Sàndor Weores,” he tells me. “He is one of the most famous poets in Hungarian literature. His work is really deep and also really spiritual.”
After running their rule over whole swathes of Weores’s oeuvre, they eventually opted for “Orvény.” Judging by the English translation of the single-stanza work, it offers an ideal launching pad for a nuanced and compelling staged work. It reads: “When I touch the house with my finger, it shatters in a sparkling explosion. When I stand on the ground, it opens up in surprise. The air around me is full of light and color, I’m flying in space!” Plenty of room for visual and emotional maneuver in there.
“We felt that this poem includes everything that we want to talk about,” explains Marofka, who also directs Awakening. That comes across in spades.
Still, there was some tweaking to be done before Marofka and Kulcsár settled on the current show format. It wasn’t just a matter of homing in on Weores’s finely crafted lines and just running with that. There was some ethereal and cerebral ground to be covered.
“We didn’t want to describe the poem,” Marofka says. “We don’t act the poem out. It is like a motto, or leitmotif. It is more the sense of the show. We don’t work from line to line [of the poem].”
On stage, they impart the spirit of the literary work through a beguiling prism of artistic disciplines. “It is really difficult to categorize the show and put it into one area. During the [eight] years when we worked on the show, we understood it is closer to clowning,” says Marofka, whose training bio includes a stint at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. “It is a mixture of clowning, non-verbal storytelling, and also some circus elements. And – it is a difficult term – visual theater.”
The actors bring a wealth of experience to the Awakening fray. “Balázs studied dramatic acting, but he had a close connection to physicality. When I searched for my own theater style or way of expression, I moved into movement theater. I work with movement and I don’t really use text.”
I was intrigued by the duo’s decision to work, predominantly, in black and white. I wondered whether that was a premeditated gambit designed to get the members of the audience to meet the performers at least halfway by completing the polychromic picture in their own minds.
“The poem mentions color,” Marofka concedes, “but I think this is metaphorical. We now use black and white because of the design of the show.”
Monochromatic photography can lead the viewer to take closer note of the details, shapes, and depth of the spectacle in question. But there is an added dimension here that comes powerfully into play. “We rely on the light design,” Marofka adds. That is overseen by light and sound technician Péter Molnár.”
In fact, the production started life in full color, but over time Marofka and Kulcsár realized that they and the work would be better served by a more streamlined palette. “Originally, we used different colors and different costumes. But there are two characters. One is more connected to light, the other has more to do with sleeping. We work a lot with light. Light is really a partner in the show.”
As are humor and alluring movement and dynamism. Sounds – and looks – like Awakening is just the ticket for these times of ours.
Marofka also notes that he and his pals in the Ladder Arts Company in Budapest are very much into hands-on corporeal entertainment rather than the digitally presented kind. “I would say [staged] theater in general is very important. We meet people in time and space – the audience. When people come to the theater, we are in the same space at the same time; I think that is really important. That happens less and less now.”
Yes, and who knows what the impact of AI and its offshoots will have on – inter alia – the world of theater in the not too distant future?
ELSEWHERE ACROSS the five-day roster: There is a charming adaptation of the evergreen tale of Don Quixote; a virtual tour, via VR technology, of the extensive Wortelmann Collection puppet museum in Bochum, Germany; a collage workshop for seven- to 10-year-olds; and a foray into pirate realms with Bella and Blob, for the three- to eight-year-old crowd.
There is also a slew of slots for grownups, including an opportunity to get down and dirty with three-person puppetry improvisation, for beginners and advanced puppeteers alike.
For tickets and more information: www.traintheater.co.il/he/festival/2025