Sárospatak Puppet in my pocket

10TH PUPPET IN MY POCKET

SÁROSPATAK - HUNGARY

1-4 JULY 2004

Festival background & History

The "Puppet in my Pocket" festival is an international union for 1-2 person and small puppetry troupes. The Hungarian UNIMA Centre is the patron of the festival.

• The festival was established in 1986 in Sárospatak (in the centre of Europe, the north-eastern corner of Hungary) and will be held in the middle of summer between the 1 st and 4 th of July.
• The festival is organised by the City Council - led by the Town Mayor - and the PINOCCHIO Foundation, an independent artistic association in which arts educational theorists and artists are clustered. The President of the foundation is László Szentirmai, a lecturer at the Miskolc University Comenius Teacher Training Department, who is responsible for the effective organisation of the festival and also for organising the Arts Pedagogy Conference which is in parallel with the festival.

• The importance of the festival is shown by the fact that the Ministry of Culture and Education and the Regional Council Cultural Department regard it as worthy of support among other significant large events.

• The history of the festival is particularly colourful and substantial. To this date, troupes have arrived to our city from every continent and from nearly every country in Europe and the Near East.

• It is our goal to give puppeteer creators of every genre the opportunity to perform.

• The city offers numerous indoor locations in which puppeteers can perform.

• The techniques and themes are not specified. We particularly like to see productions of between 25 and 55 minutes. Great success can be expected by those performers who concentrate on the plot and in whose performances understanding is not based solely on language, not on text but rather on music and sound effects.

• The festival is strongly linked to the teaching of Arts Teaching at the Teacher Training College in the town. The audience is partly made up of teachers who discuss the pedagogical use of what they have seen. Many of the speakers are drawn from the performers at the festival.

The aims of the festival are
• to protect the traditions of the art of puppetry
• to develop such forms of the genre which can balance the electronic media
• to collect experience which can be taken into schools and education

• The "Puppet in my Pocket" festival is awaited with curiosity every second year by the town's inhabitants - children and adults alike - and the holidaying visitors and the tourists.

László Szentirmai

Director of festival

http://www.boon.hu/borsod/Borsod-107666.shtm

Performers:

ORT-IKI - HUNGARY / Perseus királyfi csodatettei