Multimedia artist David Zuazola (director, scenographer, playwright, musician, actor, puppeteer...) created the international project "City of Light", which successively results in plays about cities in which events are inspired by well-known vedute and interesting, characteristic stories of the inhabitants of the chosen city.
After plays about Warsaw (Poland), Tolosa (Spain) and Seoul (South Korea), it was Kragujevac's (Serbia) turn (the selection criteria or order are not specified) and the play "City of Light" was created in the Kragujevac Children's and Youth Theatre by David Zuazola (director, concept, scenography). It was performed (May 12) at the Third International Festival of Professional Theaters for Children and Young People "Novi Sad Theater Festival" (May 8-15, 2024). The show, which was announced as "a special puppet show that goes beyond the traditional ways on which a puppet theater is based", offered viewers familiar Kragujevac vistas, situations, buildings and locations with a wide-ranging scenography, set on three levels. A team of seven participated in the "creation of conceptual solutions and production of scenography", including the performers themselves Milica Redžić Vulević, Ljubica Radomirović and Aleksandar Petković. I don't see what is "special" about the puppet expression of this play, because there is almost no animation: synchronous lighting of street lamps, remote control of vehicles, a fight in a dance club between bottles (drunkards) or a description of a music festival using the stacking of drink cans (representing the audience, consumption of drinks and uncollected garbage?) are part of the nostalgic events that, in this case, we hear about (but somehow we don't feel them to the end). In the examples shown, there were several successful, picturesque scenes, such as the pollution of the Lepenica river, caused by the spilling of paint at the "Zastava" car factory (the fall of the car series heralded the collapse of production), which caused a fish kill (first, fish jumped out of the river, and then fish skeletons; the children in the audience didn't understand what that was about!). Then, there was a striking presentation of shooting (through confessions and gunshots) and the erection of a monument ("Aborted flight") in Šumarice (for those who do not know about that tragic event, the reference remained somewhat vague). I would say that the idea and intention were extremely good and that the performers made an unusual effort, but I'm afraid that the performance might have been too similar
The third Bulgarian play at this festival came from the State Puppet Theatre of Stara Zagora, and it is about the unusual, quite surrealistic play "Hotel", author and director Lyubomir Zhelev (May 13). Zhelev, together with the performers Ana-Valeria Gostanjan and Bilyana Rainova, tells the story of "love at first sight", using various technical procedures (illusionism, juggling, acrobatics, magic tricks, slapstick), with interesting music (Todor Vasilev) and, although as a whole, the play is visually appealing (even decorative, design by Natalia Gocheva), a lot of it is questionable, even vague (why frogs?), or out of context (a head from a washbowl, a hint of a peacock in the opening scene, the introduction of puppets). There are, of course, very entertaining solutions, such as riding a deer (a combination of a chair and a deer's head), or a skillful animation of a cat (fur on the arm), but the constant passing of oversized fish and other images (supposedly inspired by Dali's paintings) causes torment, not only in a male character, but in the viewer as well. I was very surprised by the use of total darkness between scenes (popularly called “on-off direction”) which became quite irritating over time…. Additionally, I have to say that I doubt the sustainability of the 10+ indication, because the children did not understand the play at all and in the later conversation they were only interested in the details of certain tricks.
So, there is a town and there is definitely a hotel in it, but I don't know if I would recommend going there!
Olga Vujović
The author is a theater critic from Croatia. She writes for www.kritikaz.com and on the portals wish.hr, fama.com.hr, virovitica.net. She is a member of the Croatian Society of Theatre Critics and Theatrologists.