Theaters host puppets

According to the Fars news agency’s theater reporter, the 19th Tehran Mubarak Puppet Festival is being held in Tehran, a festival that includes an important part of Iranian theater art and has been inherited from our ancestors with a long history.

Homa Jadikar, one of the well-known puppet theater artists, said about the importance of dolls: “Dolls have always been with people, both from childhood and adulthood. This companionship helps humans to put the burden of the problems of the machine society off their shoulders. This requires teaching the puppet show that can have various uses in the society. It should be performed regularly in theaters so that the audience can see and recognize the puppet show.

This puppet theater artist further stated: “If we want the puppet show to be a cultural commodity in the basket of families, it must be needed. The family should feel the need for it. Why don’t families care about street performances? Because the puppet show does not have its function. Those involved in this field work so little that they have lost their audience. We can be successful on stage if we have continuous performance. When we don’t have continuous performance, we can’t expect people to accept us and take it into their homes and cultural portfolio. Puppet show should be practical and for this it should be performed continuously. Advertising should be done for it and its various uses should be taken seriously.

*Islamic Iran, the pole of puppet shows

The artistic deputy of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance in a message to this festival noted its significance; In the text of this message, it is stated: “Iranian hand-made figurines with a history of nearly four thousand years in this dense border have been a faithful display of symbolic and continuous human efforts, and the secret of the continuity of this several thousand-year-old effort should be found in the acceptability and intimacy of popular themes. And the simplicity of his mind, his preoccupations and emotions, and the artist’s reading of life and living in this strange world; In addition to the previous ones, attention should be paid to the intelligence and artistic ability of the creators of these figurines and dolls, who, despite their simplicity in structure and appearance, and the limitations of effort, have a high ability and movement in recognizing, recounting, and reproducing the lost innate human beings; Without any need for the mediation of earthly and temporal things and equally deep and refined. Like the innocent world of children and villagers and the clear feelings of people of the past.

Hadi Hejazifar, the secretary of the 19th Puppet Theater Festival, also said: “Our approach is to create a platform for the employment of puppet children. In the world, this field is profitable, but it is not like this in Iran. That’s why we went to private companies and sponsors so that the festival has an outlet in this regard.”

He said about the competitiveness of the 19th Tehran Puppet Theater Festival: “There was always criticism about the competitive part, but the Puppet Theater Festival did not have any productions during the year that wanted to participate in the festival. “I insisted that the competitive section should return to the festival to provide additional support to the puppet theater groups.”

* Showrooms hosting dolls

It should also be said; Teatarshahr Complex, Molvi Theater Center, Hall of Arts and two theaters of Bostan and Golestan Center of Theater and Puppet Theater of Children and Adolescent Intellectual Development Center are the halls that will host puppet shows from Thursday, July 8.

Taking into account the fact that among these collections, the art hall and halls of the children’s audience center have been defined, it seems that works related to children are performed in these two centers and adult shows are performed in the Shahr theater complex and Molavi theater center.

Since there is no continuous flow for performing puppet shows throughout the year, holding a puppet show festival is the only opportunity for groups active in this field to present their works.

Despite all this, it has been promised that after the puppet show festival, the Qashqai Hall of the Shahr Theater complex will be dedicated to the performance of puppet shows.

Regarding the puppet theaters, Jedikar said in an interview: “We don’t have a hall suitable for puppet theaters. Until this year, when children were allowed to perform in the art hall, there were performance restrictions in other halls. We don’t have any other halls except for one or two other halls which are related to the center of intellectual development and were built a long time ago. Therefore, we are facing a shortage of halls, but we do not use the halls we have optimally. As an example, how many puppet works has the intellectual development center or art hall done in the last six months? That is, we do not have executive planning and optimization. We have a problem with implementation. When we don’t have a performance, we don’t have playwriting, stage design, acting, and puppeteering, etc. This causes a lack of harmony between the labor market and society and its needs.”

The 19th Tehran Mubarak Puppet Show Festival will be held from the 8th to the 17th of July under the direction of Hadi Hejazifar. In the stage part of this period of the festival, 14 shows for adult audiences and 15 shows for children will be staged.

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