Being able to attend the festival was a great highlight, in order to experience and learn from the emerging puppetry styles happening in Kenya. We enjoyed conducting training workshops which were very beneficial, exciting and interactive. We also had the chance to travel in to the Kibera slums with developmental puppetry group CHAPS and experience the dramatically powerful effect of puppetry on local communities. We are subsequently working to bring these puppeteers to train and work with South African community groups in 2007. We performed our work and received great feedback, hopefully inspiring other puppeteers in their own professional performances. The festival was well organized and we learnt a lot about the challenges facing other artists around Africa such as lack of funding, infrastructure and support (a very similar situation in South Africa). Thus it became clear how important it is for artists across the continent to encourage and support eachother through sharing of skills and knowledge as well as development and training. The festival was a success because of the hard work and dedication of the Kenyan artists and volunteers who despite major financial set backs managed to produce and present a great festival. We were aware of the strain when it came to technicians and facilities, often conducting workshops in make shift spaces or struggling with run down facilities in the theatre. Also some performances had a small audience because the publicity was not great, so we feel more of the Kenyan public should have attended, also considering that the shows were all free entrance. The next step is that now we have cemented relationships in a way, it will be easier for us to communicate and prepare for exchange between our festivals and companies. A big focus for us is to develop puppetry in community awareness programmes so we are working on that now. It is also important for us to help in the sustaining professionalism of the CHAPS puppeteers who also have a passion for theatrical performance, and we did a lot of exchange in terms of the sharing of lighting techniques, choreographic styles and puppet construction
Année : 2006
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Projet:
The Paper Body Collective of South Africa toured to Nairobi Kenya’s International Puppetry festival. There we conducted three important training workshops including a puppetry and movement workshop, a shadow puppet workshop and a bunraku workshop. We also performed two pieces about addressing women’ issues and empowerment entitled La Loba and Violet Rosebite. As the directors of the south African puppet festival Out the Box, we also used the time to establish ties and exchange programmes with the Kenyan puppeteers who we hope to bring to South Africa in 2007
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Type de projet
Départ: Cape Town –South Africa
Destination : Nairobi, Kenya (Est AFrica)