Welcome to Silkeborg Puppet Festival: Festival of Wonder 2015

It is with great pleasure I welcome you once again to Silkeborg Puppet Theatre Festival.
Actually I would prefer to call Festival of Wonder a theatre festival with a focus on the extra dimensions lacking in ‘ordinary’ theatre, namely puppets, objects and the strong visual effects.

With 102 events in all, we will present performances for adults only, shows for children from age 0 and up, films, workshops and exhibits.

This year 17 theatres from Denmark are participating and 12 international theatres from The Netherlands, Canada, Taiwan, Germany, Greece, Israel, France and four separate theatres from The Czech Republic, a country with a unique tradition of puppet theatre.

It will be possible to see theatres using many different techniques, such as rod puppets, hand or glove puppets, marionettes, often combined with acting, masks, dance, live music and song, projections, etc. Visual theatre is also represented at the festival.

With the theme of ‘Animation Theatre and Human Conditions in Modern Societies’, we focus for example on Stuffed Puppet Theatre’s new performance ‘The King’, about the situations of Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, at a point in life when fame is fading and when those who formerly were friends are now not to
be trusted.

Another example is Theatre Incliné’s performance “Threads” (page 20), a story of women’s situations in war zones.

The theme is set in perspective when shows combine magic and poetry to inspire the imagination of the viewer, for example Theatre Forman Brothers performance Obludarium (page 22).

In our Back Stage Talks the audience can be close enough to the artists to enable dialogues about the performances.

An enormous thank you to our many visiting theatres from near and far which have made this program possible, and a special thanks to our festival team of professional and volunteer helpers and to the many local partners.

All of this is made possible by economic help from many sources, among them Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik’s Fund, which is supporting the festival for the fourth time.

Besides the shows open to the public, there will be closed performances for all of the schools in Silkeborg.

To the main actors, our audience: “A warm welcome! Search through the program. There are wonderful experiences waiting for you”.

Ulla Dengsøe
Artistic Director