The International Puppet Theatre Festival

Once again, puppets will descend upon the streets of Zagreb from September 15th to 20th during the 47th PIF – the International Puppet Theatre Festival. Puppet theatres from Croatia and abroad will perform for children and adults alike.

Big and small, joyfully smiling and serious, and all other kinds of puppets will descend upon the streets of Zagreb once again this year as another edition of PIF – the International Puppet Theatre Festival, is scheduled to start on September 15th. This year, it will take place for the 47th time. As previously, the festival will be announced by the opening of two exhibitions and the organization of the traditional PIF parade. The exhibition “100 Years of Slovenian Puppetry” will be opened to visitors already as of September 11th in the foyer of the Travno theatre scene, and the exhibition, “Masque, Puppet …PIF”, will be opened only a day later, and will feature 60 works by children up to the age of 14 which have arrived from Zagreb’s nurseries, schools and the Puppetry Studio of the Zagreb Youth Theatre. The parade, which will take place on September 13th, will be headed by the big PIFKO puppet. At 11 a.m. the parade will set out from Tkalčićeva Street, in front of house number 33, it will move across Ban Josip Jelačić Square to the Flower Square and then head back the same way to its starting position. The opening show of the International Puppet Theatre Festival will be a play without text, “In Suspension”, featuring Stephen Mottram from Great Britain, a marionette expert and an innovator in the field of puppet movement.

Like in previous years, this year’s PIF will showcase the best shows performed by puppet theatres from Croatia, Slovenia, Spain, Bulgaria, Poland, Russia, Great Britain, Israel and the USA. They will be most appreciated by the youngest theatre goers. Some of the shows are aimed at children of a certain age and fully adapted to their understanding of the theatre, while others will be for adults only. Some of the festival’s concurrent events will be puppetry workshops, exhibitions, book presentations and other events at different locations in the city. Every year, PIF presents an average of 20 puppet theatres from several countries, meaning that over 650 puppet shows from all around the world have been presented to audiences so far, not only in Zagreb or Croatia, but also in other Croatian towns, as well as in neighbouring Slovenia and Austria.

The abbreviation PIF stands for Pupteatra Internacio Festivalo, the Esperanto name given to it in 1968 when it was first founded by members of the Zagreb Student Esperanto Club. Owing to the fact that its programmes take place in various theatres, and that the whole event features many concurrent happenings, its contribution to the promotion of Croatian and international puppetry is unquestionable.

The festival organizer is the Travno Culture Centre. Puppet aficionados will be able to enjoy the shows until September 20th. The programme of plays and concurrent events at this year’s international puppet theatre festival can be found at www.pif.hr.