Director:
Zoran Petrovič

Actor:
Miha Bezeljak

Dramaturge:
Marek Turošík

Author of music:
Lea Čehovin

Visual concept:
Primož Mihevc

Light designer:
Miljenko Knezoci

Sound designer:
Matej Modrinjak

Language consultant:
Simon Šerbinek

Co-production:
Mini teater, Puppet Theatre Maribor and Moment

Premiere in Mini teater:
1st of September 2015

Premiere in LG Maribor:
21st od August 2015 at the 26th Summer Pier Festival

Puppet performance for children from 2 y/o

Duration 35 min

About the performance

The Boy has accepted a pretty lonely life without peers, brothers, sisters. But one day an unusual guest knock on the door and the Boy opens the door where a Penguin is standing. Their adventourous journey in the quest for answers begins.

What is a boy to do when a lost penguin shows up at his door? Find out where it comes from, of course, and return it. But the journey to the South Pole is long and difficult in the boy’s rowboat. There are storms to brave and deep, dark nights.To pass the time, the boy tells the penguin stories. Finally, they arrive. Yet instead of being happy, both are sad. That’s when the boy realizes: The penguin hadn’t been lost, it had merely been lonely.

Performance About a Boy and a Penguin is a performance about friendship, loneliness and mutual understanding aiming at our yungest audiences. A witty, gentle and simple story about a boy who has one day found a penguin at his door and wants to return it somewhere or to someone, is an adventure on a journey to the final goal - an honest friendship.

The artistic team carries out the project collectively. It is designed as a mixture of acting and animation and based on principles of passing over from the puppet and theatre form within one sole happening. The story is built with different types of puppets that encourage children to follow the touching story about tolerance, trust and willingness to help all the way to the noble end – true friendshio that conquers all obsticals.

The performance is based on motives of Oliver Jeffers' award winning children's picture book. In the year 2008 an animated film based on the picture book was also made. The story is extremely gentle, funny and simple. And from that also the performance is stemming. It wishes to hug the youngest children, to encourage their imagination and creativity and to open questions of feelings, friendship, loneliness, differences and mutual understanding.

The scenography of the performance is based in the way that puts children in the center of happening. Theay are seated in the circle in the middle of the performance so they can help the Boy in the Penguin on their way, while Miha Bezeljak, the actor from the Puppet Theatre Maribor, subtly passing over from puppet animation technologically diverse puppets and objects and live acting for which he uses diverse puppet techniques and types of puppets (hand puppets, marionettes, leaded puppets, toys, objects). The scenographer and technologist of the performance is Maribor puppet master Primož Mihevc, the author of the piano music is the musicologistLea Čehovin, the dramaturge is a graduate of dramaturgy at the DAMU Prague Academy Marek Turošík. Light designer is Miljenko Knezoci, sound designer Matej Modrinjak and language consultant Simon Šerbinek.

The director of the performance Zoran Petrovič is finishing his Masters Degree in direction at the DAMU Academy in Prague. In Maribor he is active especially as the leader of Moment and the independent theatre festival Prestopi. For Puppet Theatre Maribor he has already directed the performance The Same Old Story.

About the director

Zoran Petrovič is a theatre and puppet director who believes in a group creatin, he is interested in interwinement of different performance arts and breakthroughs in the field of puppet animation.

Festivals and tours

26th International Puppet Festival, Summer Puppet Pier , Maribor (Slovenia); August 2015

17. International Children Festival, Mini Summer Festival, Ljubljana (Slovenia); August 2015

International Puppet Festival in Ismir (Turkey); March 2016

Awards

Best Performance Award at the 26th International Puppet Festival Summer Puppet Pier , Maribor (Slovenia); August 2015