FIGURE IT OUT! 2025 – Documentation

Wednesday, 18 June 2025

On Wednesday, FIGURE IT OUT! 2025 celebrated its festival opening in a special way, combining many small theatre visits with a relaxed get-together. Starting at 7 p.m., interested people, artists, audience members and international experts gathered in the foyer and bar of Westflügel for a Lambe Lambe miniature theatre evening with free admission. Lambe Lambe, which originated in Latin America in the 1990s, describes a special form of storytelling. Often located in public spaces and designed for a random interested audience, a performer gives a performance of no more than three minutes in a theatre box for one person. Established Lambe boxes were shown at Westflügel, as well as prototypes created during the previous three-day workshop led by Omayra Martínez Garzón. Very different Lambe Lambes by people with experience in puppetry, sometimes funny, sometimes profound, but always with great attention to loving design and direct communication through robot oracles, ocean dreams and outer space, showed magical processes, childhood memories and incredible transformation processes. In a lively yet familiar atmosphere, visitors from Leipzig and around the world queued up, exchanged ideas and repeatedly immersed themselves in the pull of the Lambe Lambe. In addition, there was a creative station in the foyer, an exhibition in the Kunstautomat and short films on the half-landing, which were open to visitors throughout the festival.

Thursday, 19 June 2025

Morning Session I „Breaking the language barrier“

As in the first edition of FIGURE IT OUT! 2022, moderated discussion rounds took place daily from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Westflügel, inviting exchange between experts and interested members of the public. With international guests from the artistic field and moderated by experts from various fields, the panels each focused on a specific theme.

Under the title ‘Breaking the language barrier’, Laurette Burgholzer, theatre scholar, educator and visual artist, led the first morning session. In two thematic blocks, she explored key questions relating to language and translation in puppet theatre: How is theatre staged for an international audience? How do we communicate across cultural and linguistic boundaries? Linguist and translator Maria Wünsche provided insights into subtitling and creative captioning as ways of opening up productions to an international audience, creating accessibility and understanding. Very concrete implementation possibilities were presented, but also challenges and hurdles for subtitling, such as its parallelism to the action on stage, spatial and temporal limitations, and linguistic and cultural differences. According to Wünsche, it is essential for any type of translation to understand translation as a communicative tool that must engage with the audience. Creative captioning may be of particular interest to puppet theatre. Unlike traditional surtitles, these language-translating text segments do not function as add-ons but can themselves be used as a creative artistic element. Versatile in design and positioning, they can be used as part of the stage design, but also potentially as objects or figures, and can thus be integrated into the production in terms of both aesthetics and content.

Based on this impulse, the second part of the session was devoted to the question of language and translation in contemporary international puppet theatre. It is interesting to note here that puppet and figure theatre has its own unique translation techniques beyond subtitling. As a traditionally mobile theatrical form, multilingual performance practices, but also the reduction or renunciation of language and the search for material and image-based forms of expression are very well established here. At the same time, the discussion round showed that the question of language and translation always depends on the context of the production and performance situation. Surendranath Subbanna, production manager of the Ranga Shankara group, outlined multilingualism as the norm among South Indian audiences, which raises the question of the linguistic dimension, especially for children’s theatre. Translation, but also sound-based translingual communication, are techniques that are used here. The world premiere of Sesame–ತಿಲ took place in Kannada, one of the official languages of the southern Indian state of Karnataka. An English-language version was developed for international touring, but this had to be specially adapted as a second or foreign language with a different rhythm. Similar and other considerations were shared for other geographical contexts. For smaller language groups, such as in Slovenia, there is an automatic need for translation or reflection on the use of language, so that productions in translation are common practice. For a native English-speaking audience, such as in the UK, another problem was presented: accustomed to English as the performance language, these are difficult to programme and promote. Creative captioning was seen here as a particularly exciting artistic and practical solution. For Poland, a curator reported on the common practice of voice-over as a form of language simultaneity. Another option put forward was non-translation, which preserves the foreign language as sound or material and possibly makes it artistically productive.

Finally, beyond language, other forms of translation that play a role in transcultural artistic collaboration were presented. The creation of a common linguistic, artistic and personal working basis between the participants of Sesame–ತಿಲ was fundamental to the collaboration, but such a coming together across cultural contexts takes time – and support – and presents many practical challenges. At the same time, a common aesthetic language had to be found that brought together the different artistic styles of the participants without blurring their individual characteristics. The search for common forms of expression was often guided by objects, puppets, music and movement, but also by stories and narrative material. From the very beginning, consideration of communication channels for an international audience played a role – which in turn led to practices of translation.

Table Talk I

Table Talk I brought the artists from À la carte and Sesame–ತಿಲ, Inbal Yomtovian, Surendranath Subbanna, Soumya Bhagwat, Sharath Kodanda, Shruti Kiran, Sandeep Brahmappa, Vivek Govindaraja, Charlotte Wilde and Michael Vogel, moderated by Laurette Burgholzer, to a festively set table to discuss their artistic work over dinner.

As a kind of object theatre without objects, À la carte takes place in a dialogical setting. The work is based on a drawn map with numbered objects that the audience calls up. The performer Inbal Yomtovian then draws the corresponding card from a card index box and tells the story of the object. Playing with (auto)biographical narration and fictionalisation, a narrative structure unfolds that varies with each performance, oscillating between historical evidence, personal memory and alleged events. Among other things, questions about individual and collective imagination as well as proximity and distance were discussed, which produced a special tension between the audience, the performer and the stories told, but also reflections on the special theatrical setting.

In a way, the examination of Sesame–ತಿಲ tied in well with the content here. Based on the search for the universality of certain narratives and narrative material, the stories surrounding Till Eulenspiegel (ತಿ ಲ – tila – means sesame in Kannada) served as the basis for the development of the play, whose wisdom and follies can be found in other and similar forms in South Indian narratives, mythical structures and motifs. The collaboration between Ranga Shankara in Bengaluru and Wilde & Vogel from Leipzig brings together very different ways of playing and thinking from contemporary puppetry, Katthak, ragas and slapstick, and, with its precise handling of the individual stage elements, plays virtuosically and excitingly with the differences and similarities between the performers, playing techniques and cultural contexts. The motif of the trickster or fool is reflected in a narrative style of piecing together and in a supposedly random dramaturgy which repeatedly experiences an astonishing resolution in the material, music or movement.

Friday, 20 June 2025

Morning Session II „The impact of political conflicts on the cultural sector“

Art is political, artistic (collaborative) work is political – and the political contexts of working influence art as well as the possibilities and conditions of cultural collaboration. ‘The influence of political conflicts on the cultural sector’ was discussed on Friday morning, moderated by freelance journalist and presenter Gemma Pörzgen, who specialises in Eastern Europe, foreign policy and media. The discussion participants were Dagmara Sowa and Paweł Chomczyk (Grupa Coincidentia, Białystok, Poland), Marek Zurawski (director of the Puppet is a human too festival, Warsaw, PL), Inbal Yomtovian (Golden Delicious, FR/ISR) and Kerrin Tatman (director of the Newcastle Puppetry Festival, UK).

In the first round, the guests outlined their different contexts. The change of government in Poland is causing tension and uncertainty for local artists. The time lag between political conflicts and their direct impact on the cultural sector is creating an unclear situation. Added to this is the war in Ukraine, which raises questions about artistic cooperation, solidarity and boycott. The war in Gaza raises similar questions for artistic collaboration – and shows concretely how political reality influences actors and draws culturally and politically relevant conclusions from their national affiliation. For independent artists from Israel and Palestine in particular, this constellation often means pressure to justify themselves and prejudgement, leading to uncertainty in collaboration and fear of cultural isolation. While cuts in the cultural sector have been problematised as an international phenomenon, Brexit has brought additional practical problems for the UK that directly affect international touring. A lack of regulations, administrative hurdles, etc. make international collaboration, which is indispensable in the comparatively small field of puppetry, which depends on mutual exchange, somewhat unpredictable and require additional effort.

The discussion was not easy, as the current political realities weigh heavily. The direction offered by the moderator as a guide for the discussion was constructive and hopeful: How can and do we want to work together – despite and in the face of differences? Where is networking within the scene helpful and possible? How can the independent puppet theatre scene strengthen itself internationally and prepare for current and future challenges?

After a short break, the debate continued in four small groups, which enabled a more concrete exchange between the individual participants and yielded some interesting results. For example, forms of audience acquisition were discussed that counter the current widening gap between rich and poor with solidarity-based pricing systems and practices of international redistribution. In addition, there were considerations about safe spaces and how to deal with the audience. These questions were controversially discussed. The need to create and maintain safe and at the same time diverse democratic spaces for exchange and opinion-forming as a central task of independent theatres and institutions was contrasted with demands for theatre as a safe space, which in case of doubt (can) also exclude people through explicit political self-positioning. (How) must theatres visibly position themselves politically? What differences are acceptable and how are they negotiated? Who needs to be protected and who enforces these safe spaces? How can theatres be conceived as both safe spaces and spaces for exchange and opinion-forming? No consensus was reached on these questions during the discussion. Rather, they remain exciting topics for further discussion and are certainly worth revisiting in future rounds of exchange. In conclusion, a humanistic artistic and cultural-political practice was repeatedly proclaimed as a counterweight to political reality – who creates and tests acceptable social utopias if not the arts? These considerations once again emphasised the importance of international artistic collaborations that bring people together, establish transcultural practices and enable exchange and understanding across borders.

Table Talk II

The second artist talk on Friday was moderated by Tom Mustroph, freelance author, journalist and dramaturge (Berlin, DE), with Dagmara Sowa and Paweł Chomczyk from Grupa Coincidentia (Białystok, PL) and Charlotte Wilde (Leipzig, DE) on the performance of Superheroes. When asked about the superpower that the performance radiated into the audience, the artists talked about their working process. Following several successful collaborations between Grupa Coincidentia and Wilde & Vogel, work on the production began in 2002, based on the question of superpowers and child heroes. This research appears in the stage version as a collage of different images and scenes, from Asterix to Batman and the Joker to the biblical story of Samson and Delilah. Singing interludes connect the individual sequences dramaturgically and introduce a kind of second narrative level that contrasts the ideal of the hero with the completely normal heterosexual couple. With transformative momentum and enormous enthusiasm, characters and worlds are constructed and destroyed – and repeatedly questioned ironically. With reference to the Morning Session, Mustroph also asked the artists about the interaction between artistic work and the place where it is performed. And yes – of course, the proximity to Belarus always plays a role. But there is this place and this forest and this theatre with its very special audience – and here, too, it is important to continue, to offer other perspectives – especially in the present.

Saturday, 21 June 2025

Morning Session III „The future of international programming“

The third and final morning session of this edition of FIGURE IT OUT! was entitled ‘The future of international programming’ and was moderated by Mareike Gaubitz, head of the Documentation Centre at the German Forum for Puppetry and Puppet Theatre in Bochum. Three presentations opened perspectives on European festival organisation, international networking in the field of puppet theatre and political voice.

After a brief welcome and introduction to the current KompleXX Figurentheater project as an example of national cooperation, Taru Tuomisto [Turku, FIN] reported on cooperation in the Creative Europe project Impulse! from her perspective as director of the Turku International Puppet Festival. Together with two partner institutions from Lithuania and Portugal, they organised festival tours in Europe during the funding period from 2023 to 2024, which promoted the exchange of artists on site through longer stays and networking opportunities. Seminars and masterclasses were also held. The opportunities for cross-institutional networking, getting to know each other and exchanging knowledge, best practice and support for touring were described as the most important aspects of such international funding. As Vice-President of UNIMA International, Annette Dabs (Bochum, DE) provided the second impetus for discussion. She enthusiastically presented the work and functioning of the oldest international theatre association in the world and emphasised the importance of this form of cooperation. As an opportunity for international networking and cross-border and cross-continental exchange, UNIMA is not only an important field of work for all actors in the field of puppetry, regardless of their orientation, but also a platform for changing perspectives and promoting democracy. At the end of the panel, puppeteer, lecturer and director Stefanie Oberhoff (Stuttgart, DE) provided insights into the political dimension of artistic work. Using a speech she gave at a festival opening, she outlined the interrelationships between artistic, social and political activities, which must always interact in international contexts but often receive too little political recognition. The ensuing discussion clearly demonstrated the necessity and specific potential of cultural and artistic cooperation – for art and the arts, but also for the development of a solidarity-based, liveable, sustainable and social global community.

Table Talk III

Moderated by Veronika Darian, theatre scholar at the University of Leipzig, Samira Wenzel and Stefan Wenzel from Lehmann und Wenzel (Leipzig, DE) spoke about the English-language version of WANTED Eurydike, which was specially developed for the international festival and premiered in German in 2024. Following the different perspectives on language and translation in productions, the artists described the potential and challenges, such as in moments of improvisation, but also in relation to rhythm and acting as a physical process, that such a transfer entails. When asked about their basic approach to staging, Lehmann and Wenzel cited several aspects. In addition to their desire to develop a production as a duo, the myth of Orpheus and Offenbach’s opera ‘Orpheus in the Underworld’ were the starting points for creating a production that focuses on Eurydice. When developing specific scenes, characters and episodes, Lehmann and Wenzel emphasised improvisation as an ongoing practice, the alternation between material research, character and stage design, rehearsals and, finally, the inclusion of an outside eye or audience. Other aspects of the discussion included the specific performance practices that run through WANTED Eurydike through the use of diverse types of puppets and characters: a constant shift between levels enables open communication between the performers and with the audience on the one hand, and on the other hand provides a special wit when the narrative levels are set in motion and the construction of the story is revealed.

Sunday, 22 June 2025

The real fake object theatre brunch! on Sunday at the Kulturbar froelich&herrlich provided a spectacular conclusion to the networking and discussion programme. Under the expert guidance of Katja Spiess (Stuttgart, DE), director of FITZ – Theater animierter Formen and member of the Alliance of International Production Centres for Figure Theatres, guests Agnès Limbos (Gare Centrale, Belgium), Charlot Lemoine and José Lopez (Vélo Théâtre, France/Spain), Christian Carrignon and Katy Deville (Théâtre de Cuisine, FR), Jacques Templeraud (Théâtre Manarf, FR), Gyula Molnár and Francesca Bettini (HUN/IT/FR) discussed the German premiere of The real fake object theatre conference, which was performed on Saturday and Sunday evenings in the Westflügel. The round table opened with a comparison between historiography on the Internet, legend formation and memory: How can a chronology of object theatre be written? In 1977, the Théâtre Manarf in Angers emerged as the first significant venue. The name is programmatic; in Arabic, manarf means ‘I don’t know’ and outlines the unique forms of theatre that developed here in the 1970s, starting with Jacques Templeraud. In 1979, Christian Carrignon and Katy Deville founded the Théâtre de Cuisine in Marseille. The grand theatre meets the kitchen table as a symbol of the small and the simple. Named after the delivery bicycle of an English butcher that appeared in the first production, the Vélo Théâtre appeared in 1981, along with the artists Charlot Lemoine, José Lopez and Tania Castaing. In Belgium, Agnès Limbos founded the Cie. Gare Centrale, ‘…because I like train stations, farewells and reunions, travellers, trains and especially suitcases.’ In 1988, Gyula Molnár and Francesca Bettini collaborated for the first time in Italy – without a common name and without a company, but the artists were united by their specific approaches to and handling of the material. Many legendary productions could be cited that are still characteristic of the new styles of performance that place the object at the centre of theatrical events as a kind of ready-made. In contrast to puppetry, it was no longer about animation. Instead of bringing things to life through gaze and movement, the form, functions, properties and attributions of the objects were played with, presented and brought into relation with each other, the performer, the space and the audience in a variety of ways. Subject and object did not form hierarchical structures here, but were set in motion, reversed their relationships and developed their own functional connections – one need only think of Molnár’s ‘Three Little Suicides’ from 1981, to name just one work. ‘We were looking for a name for what we do,’ said Katy Deville, describing the meeting of the seven icons of object theatre in 1980. Théâtre d’objet – object theatre – represented a new approach to the world, to theatre, to dealing with things, which was groundbreaking for the artists. Carrignon described the practice of ‘removing all useless time’ as a visual language modelled on film theatre, whereby the stories, in contrast to the extravagant, the extraordinary (extraordinaire), usually do not transcend the familiar, but are rather ‘intraordinaire’. Isn’t it precisely in the telling of everyday and thus great stories of daily life with simple means that the epic lies? The handling of the object, it was agreed, was a question of composition, of a special sensitivity, a specific approach to the world, but also a free space for doing and trying things out.

This freedom in dealing with things, with theatrical means, but also with one’s own body and one’s own history was clearly reflected in the joint theatre work, which turned the genre, which was significantly influenced by the artists, into a narrative in itself. The starting point for the production was a carte blanche that Agnès Limbos received for the Festival Mondial des Théâtres de Marionnettes in Charleville-Mézières in 2017. In the following, the artists began working together again after many years. The goal: to be together. ‘There are seven big egos on stage’, smiled Lemoine. This only works with respect and appreciation for each other’s working methods, stories and experiences. The ‘conference’ brings together seven extraordinary artists with very special styles of performance and approaches to theatre, who have something in common and whose individual signatures are always recognisable. Extremely minimalist in terms of material, the evening opens up empty space for the wealth of experiences and the connection between the people on stage.

And the future of object theatre? What remains? A floating image on the surface of the water? A palimpsest? Reflections on preservation and research, transmission and repertoire rounded off this final round of discussions at Figure it out! 2025.