Laura Lopez| Segovia, May 15 (EFE).- This Monday the 37th edition of the Segovia Titirimundi International Puppet Festival ends with a very positive balance on the part of the organization and the companies after selling 98 percent of the available tickets and having raffled almost completely rain these days.
The director of the festival, Marian Palma, has valued, in statements to the media, the “fantastic” response of the public to a “very varied artistic proposal” and “for many tastes”.
three hundred functions
Almost 300 functions have been carried out including performances in the street, in the courtyards of historic buildings and theaters in the capital by the hand of 35 theater companies from ten different countries such as France, Belgium, Denmark, the United States, the United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Slovenia or Argentina.
A common denominator in almost all editions of the festival is the need to avoid the rain, which on this occasion has only caused the suspension of two screenings of “Las aventuras de Pelegrín” by Teatro Arbolé on Friday and a hasty finale of “Sewing and cantar” by Teloncillo yesterday, Sunday.
Economic difficulties
To questions from journalists, the director has once again stressed the “difficulties” that the organization has faced when it comes to carrying out the festival this year without knowing the economic contributions of the Junta de Castilla y León and the Ministry of Culture.
“It is very difficult to manage in this way, without having a base, financial support to support you”, lamented Marian Palma, who has assured that the organization of the next edition, which will be between May 10 and 15, “It’s already underway.”
One of the theater groups that has participated in this edition with eight performances a day on Friday, Sunday and Monday has been Ymedio Teatro, a company from Jaén formed by Álex Ramos and Santos Sánchez with 17 years of experience.
lorquian tent
The two artists parked their six-meter-long by three-meter-long “Lorca hut” on Friday, converted into a miniature theater, with the capacity to accommodate between 15 and 20 people in each pass, in the park of the San Agustín Convent.
Inside, the two actors display their peculiar “microfunctions” before the curious eyes of the public, whose objective is to excite the audience in just ten minutes.
“We try to always have a dramatic arc, as if it were a complete play: there is a presentation, a middle and an outcome, even if it is very short, but we try to have a dramatic arc with which we make the audience travel through their emotions ”, Sánchez explained this Monday to the media.
The format with which they achieve this is with the “manipulation of objects”, many of them for daily use, such as two jugs, a handkerchief, glasses and small shoes that transform, before the eyes of the viewer, into an adorable widow. she misses her late husband.
Communion Titirimundi/public
Both playwrights agree that the viewers of Titirimundi are “special”: “It is always a great pleasure to come to Segovia because it is very noticeable that the public knows where they are going,” said Álex Ramos.
“That there are so many people who would like to see it and people who have stayed here waiting in case someone failed to enter is a rush for us, it is a joy”, he completed.
It has been six days in which the entire city has vibrated with very diverse performances both in format -theater of objects, glove puppets, string puppets, club puppets, “clowns” and others- as well as in the type of stories that have been counted.
The Belgian Pikz Palace stuffed toy butcher shop, which offered the public at the foot of the Aqueduct “Barbie thighs” and “Winnie de Pooh hamburgers”, opened the street festival and the “cabaret” of Anna Karenina from the Czech -Slovakian Fakete Seretlek & Studio Damúza opened the edition in the theater.
Titirimundi, Berlanga and the pandemic
As of Wednesday, the street shows, patios and rooms followed one another, some of them as unique as the first puppet version of the film “El Verdugo” by Luis García Berlanga, from the company El Espejo Negro, or “the only Library of the world of ropes and knots” by José Antonio Portillo.
The worst months of the coronavirus pandemic have left their mark three years later in this 37th edition and the most obvious example of this has been the emotional installation “Distance, memory capsules” by La Societé de la Mouffette & Coma 14, which relive the most shocking memories of the health crisis.
Although the official programming of the festival has been carried out from Wednesday to Monday in the city of Segovia, since the end of April the companies have toured outside the capital and toured 39 towns in the province, twelve spaces in Madrid, four municipalities in Castilla and León and three others outside the community.
Parallel activities have also been carried out such as the “Titiricole” school campaign, workshops for professionals and the general public, two book presentations and special passes for people with difficulties accessing the festival, such as children admitted to the Pediatric Unit of the Hospital. EFE