Tour in Japan

Tour poster - face

On Tuesday July 19th we are traveling to Japan Rebecca Simpson and myself to start a national tour with the show "Full Hands," and we will be busy until August 18th. There are seven places where we operate, with a total of 17 representations:


- Okinawa, an island located in an archipelago of 160 islands called by the same way. It is the southernmost region of Japan, and is famous as the birthplace of karate and other martial arts.
- Osaka, Japan's third largest city, undisputed capital of Bunraku and Kabuki.
- Nagoya, Japan fourth largest city located between Osaka and Tokyo, known for its automobile industry and in the Second World War the city was destroyed in its entirety.
- Tokyo, the capital, a city in which we will performance twice: once for the Instituto Cervantes and another for the Teatro Puk, organizer of the tour. Although the center of Tokyo, with 23 districts has a population of about 8,340,000 inhabitants, the metropolitan area reaches about 34.5 million, the largest urban agglomeration in the world.
- Nagano, west of Tokyo, also known as the "roof of Japan" for being in a mountainous area. Zenkoji Temple is famous, a place of pilgrimage as well as macaques Jigokudani Park, where monkeys bathe in hot pools, especially in winter.
- Chiba, a city located in Tokyo Bay
- Sapporo, Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan. Curiously it was in this city where Maria Callas last performed on stage, on November 11, 1974 (says Wikipedia).

Tour poster - back

During the trip, is expected to know several theaters, festivals and popular traditions of puppetry in the country. A trip that opens our Routes of Punchinello to the confines of the Rising Sun Land. I'll bring updates.

Good Pulcinella videos

I received the link to three great videos about the Neapolitan Pulcinella, with several interviews with Maestros as Nunzio Zampella, Giovanni Pino, Bruno Leone, Salvatore Gato or Otelo Sarzi, with images from different historic moments, all very interesting. A valuable document that has put in his Youtube channel Licio Esposito.

Tour in Lebanon

 I just came, with Rebecca Simpson, from a long tour in Lebanon that has led me to many different cities and towns across the country. The tour was organized by the El Khayal, who heads Karim Dakroub. The performances began in Beirut at the Theatre Tournesol. Then I was in Raifoun, at the same house where The Maronite Patriarch Sfeir was born. The next day was the turn to be in Btekhnay performing in a Druze community center. Then, I performed in Tibnine, Tripoli, Jounieh, again in Beirut, Zahlé and Jbaa. The last day we went to the south to perform in Sawani, where we played in a session organized by UNIFIL.

I attache here the video shot in Rayak Station, at the Bekaa Valley, a veritable graveyard of trains that shows the station as it was when his services were interrupted in 1976 by the war.

The interested can find more information about the station in my article posted on my spanish blog Rutas de Polichinela. You can also see the website of Elias Boutros Maalouf and his proposal to convert the station into a museum.

The Istambul Puppet Festival

Routes of Pulcinella took me, from Granada directly to Istanbul. I had been invited to the Puppet Festival, directed by my friend, the actor and Karagöz shadow player Cengiz Ozek. I stayed in Istanbul from 9th until 19th May.

The Puppet Center of Cengız Ozek

I know this city very well, which I had visited with some regularity since my first time here in 1973, when old Constantinople still showed its traditional features, elegant and decadent, with their old taxis like boats cruising the streets full of noisy traffic, but slow and more or less passable. I remember the ship Akdeniz, one of the two boats that made the Barcelona-Istanbul route in six days, with stops in Marseilles, Genoa, Naples and Athens; the Karadeniz did the same but instead of Athens, stopped at Alexandria. Istambul, with bustling streets full of people and an array of porters, water-sellers and vendors of other extraordinary goods which made a deep impression on me. The Galata Bridge was still made of wood; it burned down and was later replaced by another, cement bridge. And since that first trip I have made some friendships that have lasted until today.

Later I met Cengiz Ozek, who opened the doors for me to the Turkish Karagöz shadow theatre, of which Cengiz is an acknowledged master. Committed to promoting the art of puppetry, Cengiz organizes this festival year after year which has earned international fame and recognition. This year, it involved some twenty companies and more than sixty performances in different theatres and neighborhoods in the city.

Cengız Ozek

As for  my project of Routes of Pulcinella and the relationship between cities and puppets, I want to relate Istambul to the character of Karagöz and to the shadow that bears his name. A character who despite not belonging to the lineage of Pulcinella technique or glove puppet, bears some similarities to him and his Neapolitan dramatic spirit: burlesque attitude, self-confidence in speaking, social criticism, use of surreal nonsense , etc.

On 11^th May  I did two performances at the Pera Museum and later, on 16^th May 2011, I gave a lecture at the Department of Theatre Arts at the Sahne Dekorian University, about the relationship between puppets and cities and the proposed book, Routes of Pulcinella.

Here are two videos on Ozek Cengiz Karagöz.

El Rinconcillo de Cristobica

I consider myself very fortunate to bring my Routes of Polichinela to the Festival "El Rinconcillo de Cristobica" held in Valderrubio, Granada (Spain), where I've been invited to participate with my show "Full Hands." Give me the opportunity to approach the Andalusian puppeteer tradition, which inspired Garcia Lorca for the development of his work on Don Cristobal. No wonder the director of the Festival, Henry Lanz, founding member of the historic Granada company Etcetera, is the grandson of Hermenegildo Lanz, an artist who built all the puppets used by Federico García Lorca.

The name of the Festival is inspired by the circle (Tertulia) of Rinconcillo to be held in Granada, at Alameda coffe in Plaza del Campillo, currently occupied by the restaurant Chikito, and where Lorca was one of its main proponents. We cite an article by Juan Luis Tapia, published in Ideal.es:

"The group, in addition to the brothers Federico and Francisco García Lorca, was added by Melchor Fernández Almagro, Antonio Gallego Burín, Miguel Pizarro Zambrano, the philologist José Fernández-Montesinos, José María García Carrillo, Fernando de los Rios, José Navarro Pardo Arabist , Manuel Ángeles Ortiz, Ismael González de la Serna, Hermenegildo Lanz, Juan Cristobal Roda Ramón Pérez, Luis Mariscal, Angel Barrios and a very young Andrés Segovia. The composer Manuel de Falla also attended those meetings, but rarely because he hate noise. Another of the veterans of this very young group was the Socialist Fernando de los Rios, who was Minister of Justice and Public Instruction, and a kind of guardian of the brothers García Lorca. "

Devoted each year to a different specialty puppet theater, this year is focused on glove puppet, with companies from Brazil, Catalonia, France, England and Italy. I quote the text of presentation of the Festival program:

"From Barcelona comes the centennial company's Sebastián Vergés, that after three generations of puppeteers, keeps the tradition of the Catalan glove. From the same city, Toni Rumbau, one of the founders of La Fanfarra, presents a show that combines the popular glove puppet with the language of the shadows. Don Christopher is presented irreverent, sarcastic, and it comes from France with a Spanish accent, as the group Pelele is run by Paz Tatay from madrid. From France but also from China is Le Théâtre du Petit Miroir, Jean Luc Penso, a direct disciple of legendary master Taiwanese Tien Lu Li, who learned that refined and acrobatic glove puppets in Taiwan. In this event could not miss the caustic Punch, arriving from England in the hands of Rod Burnett of StoryBox Theater, with his partner Judy. His cousin Pulchinella, cries and laughs with the swazlle, by Bruno Leone, emblematic representative of the Neapolitan tradition glove puppets. Eder de Paiva, from the Jatoba Mamulengo company, bring to us a show from Brazil in which he mixes black folk heroes with ventriloquism and Latin music from his country. "

An ideal appointment to this blog of Punch Routes. From 5 to 8 May in Valderrubio (Granada).