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2011-2013

★7th Biennial of Puppetry Artists of Slovenia,
Tamiko Onagi visit Maribor
on 12th-15th September 2013

★Iida Puppet Festa 2013(Japan)
on 6th-11th August 2013
Special issue for Asian Puppetry Yoshihiko Shibasaki worked
there as one of tutor for create collaboration-works

.★Visiting Taiwan:
Tomoko Ohashi and Yayoi Sakumavisited Taiwan for creation of puppets that If Kids maderequest for making puppets

★The festival MTERINKA "13" (Czech)
Tamiko Onagi Participated in it on 18th~22nd June 2013

★Performance in UNIMA Chengdu,China ★Invitation stage★

[Asataro, the Onion Head]
21st UNIMA Congress & World Puppetry Festival in Chengdu
Participated; Tamiko Onagi, Hiromi Takimoto, Ayako Ichihashi, Katsuyoshi Nishimoto, Hiromasa Kurihara, Shizuki Noda, Yasushi Yoshikawa, Sayaka Inoue, Yasushi Ashibe
Period; 27th May ~ 3rd June 2012

★Performance in Taiwan
Period: 29 September-2 October 2011
[I’m not your Mama][Magical Box]
Attend: Tomoko Ohashi, Yoshihiko Shibasaki, Katsutoshi Nishimoto, Mamika Kawajiri

★Performance by Tan Zhiyuan, from China
Period: 7 March 2012 at Puk Puppet Theatre

★Performance by Mr. Bruno , from Rio de Janeiro, (Brasil)
[Marionette Machine]
Period: 11November 2011 at Puk Puppet Theatre ★15th Golden Dolfin (Varna, Bulgaria)
Period: 1-6 October 2011
Attend: Tamiko Onagi, Lumi Takabatake

★15th Golden Dolfin (Varna, Bulgaria)
Period: 1-6 October 2011
Attend: Tamiko Onagi, Lumi Takabatake

★Research and preparation: Tamiko Onagi, for Women’s Commission of UNIMA
Period: 18-24 June Magdeburg, Germany

★Executive Committee of UNIMA in Charlesville-Mezieres
Period: 16-18 September 2011 at Villa d’aubilly
Attend: Tamiko Onagi

★Visit: Institute Ramon Llull in Barcelona, Tamiko Onagi
Express thanks for support of Performance-tour in Japan of Fanfarra Period:23-26 September 2011

★Performance of Puppet Theatre for Children from Moscow
Period: 31 July-7 August 2011 at Puk Puppet Theatre
Russia Cultural Festival in Japan

★Performance-Tour in Japan by "Fanfarra"
[Full Hands] by Toni Rumbau & Rebecca Simpson (Barcelona, Spain)
Period: 19 July-18 August 2011 Performed in Okinawa, Osaka, Nagoya, Tokyo, Iida, Sapporo and Asahikawa

★PUK at the UNIMA Congress and World Puppetry Festival 2008

"Buying Mittens"＆"NUTCRACKER"

The 20th UNIMA Congress and World Puppetry Festival were held from April 1st to April 12th 2008 in the Australian city of Perth. The event was attended by 12 people from PUK: T.Onagi, who is the vice-president and a member of the executive council of UNIMA, T.Hase (principal of PUK), Y.Shibasaki, S.Harayama, S.Nakayama, M.Kirioka, N.Ishida, T.Nakaide, Y.Ashibe, as guest group and    M.Yamagoe, K.Kadota and S.Yuri.

The quadrennial puppetry festival 　　　Director, Tsuguo Hase

　　UNIMA (Union Internationale de la Marionnette, or the International Puppetry Association) is an international association that is affiliated to UNESCO and counts among its members figures in the world of puppetry from 65 countries.  Once every four years, it holds its Congress, which attracts puppet theatre figures from around the world, and its huge World Puppetry Festival.

　　                                                Congress: Tamiko Onagi, who is on the Executive Member      of UNIMA as well as being Vice-president of UNIMA-JAPAN. This role was performed for many years by the late Taiji Kawajiri, PUK's director, but after his death T.Onagi has thus far constantly supported UNIMA's activities, despite being faced with many difficult circumstances. She attended the Congress for eight full days, and elected as chairperson of the Women's Comm, whose establishment she had proposed. She is trusted implicitly by all the committee members from other countries, and I was reminded just how irreplaceable she is for the international activities of Japan UNIMA and PUK.

  UNIMA and PUK were both established in the year 1929, and reach their 80th anniversary together this year. UNIMA is a worldwide organization that, through the medium of puppet theatre, pursues a spirit of collaboration and living together, overcoming differences in ethnicity, race, belief, language and politics. Those of us who participated in the event chatted and shook hands with people from the puppet world who had gathered in Perth, talked about our stage performances and work, and spent a most enriching ten days. We were once again reminded that the work of PUK has gone hand-in-hand with the goals and spirit of UNIMA, which seeks world peace, and our trip to Australia filled us with a sense of confidence that the activities of PUK will continue to go on. 

★Hands, be the painter, the musicians! <2008>

Hiromasa Kurihara, stage director

I first met Nikolina Georgieva in 1989.   Prof. Georgieva was in Japan as the stage director of Carnival of Animals, a performance featuring the shadows of actors' hands, which was put on to celebrate PUK's 60th anniversary. The unscripted shadow puppet performance used music from Camille Saint-Saens'  Carnival of Animals, and I was cast in one of the parts.

  I had only joined PUK a couple of years before, and had only a limited experience and knowledge of performance and puppetry. Though I had an enormous sense of achievement at the end of the final performance, I cannot actually remember being taught anything by the professor. I just remember her tremendous energy.

  I now realize that it was just a question of getting on with the work of playing the role given to me with all my strength. Of course there was none of the common image of puppeteers, no leeway, no playing - this was work, not creation.

  And then in 2008, I met Prof. Georgieva again, this time with her grandchild. I thought she had appeared to have mellowed as she had grown older. But at the first rehearsal she suddenly said “Get the eight puppeteers to move ad lib.” It was like being told she wanted to see or hear an eight-man jazz group improvising. (I felt as much pressure as if I was being told that our production would be planned around this.) A performance cannot be produced unless people are prepared to take on board each other's skills and expressions as puppeteers. And since there was no script it was not easy to communicate. I acutely felt the creative issues that PUK faced. The session involving those eight puppeteers didn't come to anything concrete, but it did produce some ideas and images. This clearly was creation, not work. And the sense of achievement was even richer. Prof. Georgieva also taught me that shadow puppet performances could still have a real impact on present day audiences, as long as the performance seems to breathe, as long as it is live.

  Thank you, Prof. Georgieva. I wish you good Health!

２０００〜２００8

☆Invitation　　
PUK invite Prof. Nikolina Georgieva, in order to ask lead and direction of "Carnival of Animals" for PUK's young ensemble in this autumn for the program "La Pupa Teatro 12", the puppet show for grown-up which will be held at PUK Puppet Theatre, Shinjuku, Tokyo.

★Study abroad (Bulgaria)
Student; Mari Kodama
Graduated; "NATFA" National Academy For Theatre and Film Arts (1 year course for student from abroad) on Feb. 2008

★The Executive Meeting of UNIMA and International Puppet Festival "materinka 07"
Period; 14th ~ 26th June 2007
Attended; Tamiko Onagi
Organized; The Naives Theatre of Liberec (Czecho)

STUDY ABROAD
★Mari Kodama is now studying the design of Puppetry in NATFFA(National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts/Sofia Bulgaria) Which Prof. Nikolina Georgieva teaching there.( from on 1st of March 2007)

TEREMAKASHI!(Thank you in Malaysian)
2007/Jan/16th-22th
by Machiko Watanabe
It was about ten years ago that we started offering theater-play workshops using puppets made of newspapers. It does not require any props and is very inexpensive as all it takes is some newspapers and some scotch tape to make these simple puppets. But the workshop has been quite successful, perhaps because children can freely create whatever they imagine.
This January, I was invited to Malaysia to give this workshop to Malay children. (It was during last fall’s monodrama festival in Cheju Island, South Korea that this workshop was spotted but a teacher of an acting school in Malaysia). But the main purpose of my visit was to make large-size puppets using carton boxes and newspapers with the children and then to parade with them during the Kid's Carnival organized during a school bazaar.
During the workshop, there were some children who were left out and other who got easily bored. However, the older students and adult staff dealt with them exemplarily, showing them understanding and not forcing them. I was happy to see that Malay children are brought up with such love. I left Malaysia with love and respect for Malay people who have similar sensitivity as the Japanese people.

“A Tiny Pink Dragon” overseas performance
2007/Mar/7th-14th
by Harunobu Shimizu
　　The seven members of PUK Puppet Theater were invited to Taiwan by If Kids Theatre Company (Taipei) this March as the first performance in Taiwan. For this occasion, we chose “A Tiny Pink Dragon” which has been performed in Japan for many years and popular among Japanese children.
　　The performance took place Taipei County Art & Culture Auditorium, which is located near Taipei City. We performed a total fo four shows during March 10~11, 2007. The 750 seats of the auditorium were almost completely full for all of the four shows. We have prepared as much Chinese lines as possible in order to communicate the content of the performance. Despite the language barrier, we were able to communicate the message of the performance by saying key lines in the play in Chinese and thanks to Chinese super-title that the organizer had kindly prepared.
　　 The vice mayor of Taipei was present among the audience and I still remember how he had a big smile like a child as he watched the performance.
　　On March 12th and 13th, we held a series of workshops on hand-held puppetry, from of Kuruma-Ningyo, and shadow theater.

Taiwan Performance full of Energy
by Mamika Kirioka
　 Mr. Tzu-Chang Chao(C.E.O.), the director of the company named it “IF” with the wish to communicate the importance of having a dream. Mr.Tzu-Chang Chao saw our performance of “A Tiny Pink Dragon” about a year ago in Japan and he felt that the main message of our show was the same as his theatre's: importance of dreaming. He says that Pink Dragon not only made the audience laugh but it had an important story to tell. He wished to show our work to Taiwanese children and that is how our trip realized.
　　In Taiwan, we were greeted by numerous press conferences and TV interview. We were quite nervous as we haven't had much experience in giving press conferences but thanks to the PR effort, the theatre was packed with audience for all four performances that took place over two days.
　　As for the performance, the actors and the audience were able to share a moment full of intensity and energy. For this performance, we decided to say some of the lines in Chinese. In the beginning, the audience reacted and cheered every time they heard a line in Chinese but later in the show, they became used to it and they were absorbed in the play. Especially in the scene where Hatch seeks the pink dragon saying desperately, saying “Where are you? Pink dragon!” in Chinese, we could sense that the audience is completely taken in to the world we have created on stage.
When the show was over, we were greeted with a thunder of applause. The enthusiasm of the audience was at a level that we rarely see in Japan and we took one curtain call after another. Later at the lobby, we were surrounded by a crowd of people seeking hand shake and photo.
　　The members of IF Kids Theatre supported us fully throughout our stay in Taiwan, taking care of us off the stage and on the stage for preparation. So much so that by the end of the very last show, we were so moved that we hugged and cried with them. We felt that the success of our performances was owes everything to our working together. We communicated in a bit of Japanese, Chinese and English but we managed to understand each other.

From May 24^th until June 5^th 2004, “Aya and Jirokichi, the Wolf” embarked on a Balkan Tour, visiting four countries of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia-Montenegro and Croatia, performing in local puppet theatres (except in Croatia where we participated in UNIMA Festival).

“Aya and Jirokichi, the Wolf” is a story about how Jirokichi grows to love an abandoned child, Aya, with a father’s love as he raises her. Perhaps thanks to its simple story line, house full of children were completely taken by the show and the theatres were filled with laughter and applause wherever we performed. The Opening Act incorporating Japanese traditional acts were very popular and the audiences seemed to be pleased with our effort to insert lines in local language in the show.

We must also not forget the attention and the support of the theatre staffs. In all the theatres we performed in, we were blessed with highly talented staffs who are devoted to puppetry and it is thanks to them that we managed to perform successful shows.

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Our Balkan Tour culminated in Croatia where we participated in the 19^th Congress and Festival of UNIMA from June 6^th through 12^th. There, new PUK members joined us from Tokyo to perform “Tenshu Monogatari” for adults as well as “Aya and Jirokichi, the Wolf” fro children.

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“Tenshu Monogatari” is a story of tragic love between a warrior and a phantom that appears in a castle. Even though most of the lines were in Japanese, the audiences seemed to be taken by the show and greeted us with a big applause.

Audiences of wide age range came to see the two shows and there were long lines of those who wanted to see the puppets after each show.

We also would like to note the devoted assistance of the staffs of Kalvarija Cultural Center and share the success of our performance with them.

★"CHILDREN　FIRST" Singapole Theatre Festival For Children
presented by act3
Participated: Tatsuo Satoh, Tsutomu Mikami, Ei Aoki,
Ayako Ichihashi, Shoko Nakayama
Period: 6th~15th Mar 2000
Presented: "Rabbits School""Scarf Fantasy"

★�]III　UNIMA CONGRESS 2000 MAGDEBURG, GERMANY
Period: 24th Jun ~2nd Jul 2000
Participated: Kiichi Sone, Toyoko Takeuchi, Mariko Kishimoto,
Tamiko Onagi(Council of UNIMA), Junko Arakawa, Lumi Takabatake,
Katsuyoshi Nishimoto, Shizuki Noda, Nobuko Ishida, Keimei Muta, Mieko Nakano
"Tea-time Japan"
Presented: "Vaudeville" & "Peter and Mollie"
(M.Kishimoto and K.Muta) as the seventh anniversary of Taiji Kawajiri's death
★SPECIAL LECTURE & WORKSHOP
BY Prof. Todorka Rouskova and Ass. Prof. Maia Petrova
Theme: "Re: Direction and Design for Puppetry"
Listener: Directors, players, producers, designers, etc. at PUK
Period: 22th Mar ~2nd Apr 2001
*T.Rouskova give an audition to Puk's player for "Flight with Gloves" as 30th Anniversary of Puk Puppet Theatre house