Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
THE WISHING TABLE
Adaptation and directing: Marek Bečka
Music: Jose
Visual concept: Robert Smolik
Language supervisor: Mateja Dermelj
Light and sound design: Tilen Vipotnik and Tomaž Grubelnik
Photo: Nada Žgank
Acting: Jose and Aljaž Jovanovič
Head of technicians: Tilen Vipotnik
Light and sound design: Tomaž Grubelnik, Anže Kreč and Tilen Vipotnik
Theatre-puppet play for children aged from 3 years up.
Production: Mini teater, Ljubljana, 2008
International tours: Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Poland
The Wishing Table is considered to be one of the most beautiful and most popular fairytales in the world. There was once a house in the suburbs where a father lived with his son Michael. They had a goat who used to tell only lies. Michael was in love with Margaret. One day he came in possession of a wishing table, a golden sheep and a magic club that could punish all the liars and the thieves ...
In 2005, Marek Bečka directed his first performance for MINI TEATER, the theatre-puppet Puss in the Boots. We have invited this popular Czech director and actor again to direct one of the most beautiful fairytales ever written - The Wishing Table. Marek Bečka was born in 1964 in Plzen, he graduated at the Theatre Academy in Prague (DAMU). In his rich career he acted at the DRAK Theatre in Hradec Kralowe, and later as a freelance artists, he created a number of street performances and puppet performances for the youngest spectators. In 1991, he founded the Theatre Bouchty a loutky (=Doughnuts and Puppets) where in the last thirteen years he created more than 25 performances. Some of them are well known also to the Slovene public since they took part in several summer festivals for children LUTKE (Puppets), Mini Summer in Ljubljana, Lutkovni pristan (Puppet Port) in Maribor, and Primorski festival (Litoral Festival) at Izola. Marek Bečka works as a university teacher at the Prague University of Performing Arts DAMU; he was a tutor to Matija Solce, a prominent Slovene puppeteer. Marek Bečka works also with different other puppet theatres in the Czech Republic. Directing The Wishing Table will be his second co-operation with a theatre in Slovenia or out of his country (although he lead already several workshops for professional and amateur puppeteers in different parts of the world from Czechia to Hong Kong. The project The Wishing Table will be dedicated to our youngest audience. It belongs to the part of MINI TEATER Program reaching for known literary texts that serve as ground-works in the research of puppet performances or this media in general. The case was the same with Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince n the director Luis Zornoza Boy.
We expect this performance to be a success in the field of puppets: Marek Bečka with his original, typical and well recognisable touch as the director, and the young musician Jose with his energetic modern music and live performed songs – a team that will create a performance not easy to forget. Aljaž Jovanovič, a young graduating student of the Ljubljana Theatre Academy, will be acting in this performance for the first time side by side with Jose.
