Welcome to Puppet Theatre Festival

The theme for the festival this year is Contrasts: a meeting between experiment and tradition. The contrast is great between the Dutch Stufffed Puppettheatre'Schickelgruber alias Adolf Hitler and the Indian puppeteer Puran Bhatt, who will be demonstrating mastery of the art at KunstCentret Silkeborg Bad in the Asian Puppet Exhibition. The meeting of people is a central part of a festival. This period is when we gather, young and old, people from Silkeborg as well as those form other areas of Denmark and even from around the world. We get together, make appointments, meet with friends, see performances, talk in the café. Children are excited by the shows as well as by being able to make their own puppets in the workshop. The organizers exchange experiences and actors, both Danish and international, meet and are inspired by each other's work.

As usual, the festival is centered around Lunden and Vestergadehallen. It has also been necessary to find alternative venues, for example The Museum, The ArtsCentre, Silkeborg Church and Silkeborg Library. These institutions have all graciously allowed us to use their halls for the festival.

A very warm thank-you goes to Bio, which has been an open and enthusiastic partner in the project, Puppettheatre at the Paper Factory

Street Theatre and puppet theatre in unconventional places will also be one of this festival's surprises.

The schools in the commune will be visited by one or more performances in the festival period. Puppet theatre and films will be shown for kindergartens.

A big thank-you to our sponsors and to the many volunteer helpers, without whom this festival could not take place.

We hope and believe that our audiences will wonder at it all and experience the wonder of puppetry.

Ulla Dengsøe
Artistic Director

Silkeborg´s Welome:

Welcome to Puppetfestival

Among the many cultural opportunities in Silkeborg are a few which stand out.
The puppetry festival is quite unique in this context.

We are not making a Hit List, but if we should, it would be hard to put any other candidate in first place. Luckily, that is not what the organizers behind the festival are thinking about. It is much more important to create and atmosphere where there will be good experiences for all who have the desire to be a part of the fascinating magic of puppetry. Once again, they have succeeded in gathering the best from Denmark and from the world outside our borders.

The festival theme is 'Contrasts: a meeting between experiment and tradition', a theme which can also be applied to the world of art and culture, and perhaps especially to the contrasts in society and in the global perspective. There the contrasts are not between artistic experiment and tradition but are much more threatening and dramatic.

It would be wonderful if we could help towards global understanding through artistic expression such as puppetry. And I am proud that we in Silkeborg can contribute to this cause. That is only possible because so many committed people, with Ulla Dengsøe in front, have once again put together an exciting program for the puppetry festival - for our absorption, amusement and philosophizing.

Jørn Rye Rasmussen,
Chairman for the Committee of Recreation and Culture