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The 29th edition of the Tolosa International Puppet Festival concludes with an important support from the audience

Titirijai Festival came to its official end last Sunday after an eight day program, the participation of twenty two companies and an attendance of over eleven thousand people

The Tolosa International Puppet Festival concluded on Sunday, the 4th of December, after an intense eight day program, during which Swiss puppetry received a special attention. Twenty two companies, many of them from other European countries, have taken part in the 29th edition of the festival this year. There has also been a wide representation of companies from other Spanish regions.

The headline for this year’s festival in the words of Miguel Arreche, co-director of the Festival together with Idoya Arregui, is: “Positive”. With part of the figures still to be processed -mainly attendance figures at the shows programmed in the other seven towns in Guipuzcoa and the one in Vizcaya, which are part of the Titirijai Circuit -, “only in Tolosa have we had over 11.000 people attending the festival” Arreche points out.
This year’s festival attendance has been slightly lower than last year’s as there have been fewer shows programmed due to the crisis. But Box Office figures prove that the audience likes the festival: “Public attendance at the different venues has gone from 65% full, at low ebb, to 100% sold out, on over ten occasions”.

Prize for Jonas the sperm

As far as the exhibition dedicated to Swiss puppetry is concerned, “it has been visited by over six thousand people, which is a very good response from the public”. The School Program shows, the majority of the Titirijai program, “have had the highest levels of attendance and sometimes even problems fitting them all in”.

Artistically speaking, Arreche thinks that “the level has been very good, in general”. Apart from only one play, that he prefers not to mention and he considers a bit disappointing, he thinks that the plays have been excellent “like the version of ‘Antigona’, by the company Les Helices, a perfectly designed setting and interpretation”. He also very much liked “the magnificent show offered by the Swiss company ‘Oskar’ with the play ‘All aboard the train’”.

The Child Jury unanimously chose ‘The fantastic trip of Jonas the sperm’ as the best play for children in this year’s festival, by the company El Espejo Negro, from Malaga. A scene of the play can be seen in the photograph.

Latin American airs for 2012

The exhibition dedicated to Switzerland at Palacio Aramburu during the Titirijai festival has been a remarkable event, even for the Swiss. The director of the Neuchâtel Festival, who came to Tolosa just to see the exhibition, was very impressed with it. “This is one more proof that the exhibitions set up at Titirijai are unique, and often such complete collections cannot be found even in the origin countries. The same thing happened with the exhibition about India; the Indians took the exhibition to India and other surrounding countries afterwards. “The exhibition on Swiss Puppetry will travel now to Switzerland; so much so, that the recently released exhibition catalogue by the festival organisation is already being translated into French and German”.

Arreche says that next year will be special. “We have a less conventional project for next year; we will call it ‘Títeres de ida y vuelta’ (‘Round-Trip-Puppets’). There will be a section dedicated to five important Latin American companies, and another five companies made up of Latin American artists who settled in Spain years ago. Apart from that, there will be another five Spanish companies with no connection at all to the Latin American Puppet theatre and another five young and emerging Spanish groups. Next year’s exhibition will probably focus on Cuban Puppetry”.