January, 2003

From mid-September to mid-October, 2002, Teri Jean and I, along with musician Guy Drollinger and his wife, Sue, toured Germany and the Czech Republic with our shadow puppet show, The Adventures of Great Rabbit, based on a native American tale. The tour was organized by Olaf Bernstengel, our partner puppeteer in Dresden, Germany.

We started out in Bad Liebenwerda, a small town in eastern Germany with a lovely museum that, together with a museum in a neighboring town, hosted an international puppetry festival. The puppeteers, from Germany, Mexico, Spain, and the US, performed in the museums and also in area schools and at village festivals. It was great fun to see the other puppeteers and to experience the country as participants instead of tourists. At one school, the older students stayed after the show and asked us questions they had prepared in English. They were so pleased with themselves for being able to communicate... they asked us about our favorite foods, colors, movie stars...and did very well with the language!

We spent a weekend in a Dolni Postevna, a little border town in the Czech Republic. The whole town, 1700 residents, seemed to travel from show to show; first to the puppet theatre, then the town hall, then a park, so as not to miss any of the widely varied shows. We were told afterwards that Great Rabbit had been the favorite of the local kids.

We ended the tour in Dresden, Olaf’s home town, where we performed at a festival in a castle in a neighboring small town. By that time, we’d gotten to know some of the other puppeteers, the ones that traveled from festival to festival as we did, quite well, and we’d seen a year’s worth of all types of shows, large and small, traditional and avant-garde, adult and family. The crowning event was the party celebrating the 20th anniversary of Fundus; A Museum on Wheels, Olaf’s puppet troupe. It was held in the castle and was quite an event! Olaf, who along with his partner Detlef, performs an antique marionette variety show (they did it here in 1993 and 2000), had contacted all of the old time marionette performers in his region (and there are quie a few!) and invited them to perform a short piece at the party. So every 45 minutes or so, Olaf would roam the castle with a gong, announcing to the 100+ people scattered in conversational groups that a performance was about to begin. In between, people ate, drank, listened to live music, and generally made merry! Olaf’s best friend Karli, a taxi driver, had arranged continuing taxi service from the castle back to Dresden, so no one would have to drink and drive!
This gives us something to live up to when we celebrate our 30th anniversary during our 2004-2005 season!

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