Israeli puppetry evokes lessons on ecological balance
PUPPETRY always evokes laughter, even when presented as satire or ironic imitation. And children are drawn by it as they get lessons in a subtle way too, like the beloved “Sesame Street.”
Taking puppetry to the highest level is Israel’s The Key Theater with its production of “When All Was Green.”
On May 4, Filipino children, their parents, teachers and guardians enjoyed the award-winning puppetry play without words about mankind, nature and greed at the Museo Pambata on Roxas Boulevard in Ermita.
Brought to Manila by the Embassy of Israel, the audience including TheManilaTimes had the “rare op-portunity to see such a magnificent,
well-balance, heart-warming meaningful and professionally rendered performance for little children,” as echoed the same by a Hungarian theater president.
Creators Dikla Katz and Avi Zlicha explained that while walking in the streets of Tel Aviv, looking at trees, fingding abandoned old books
waiting for someone to take them home, they found a strong equivalent between trees and books.
After collecting almost 100 books, instead of throwing to the garbage, they recycled them into a set, objects and puppets giving birth to When All Was Green.
“There was no intention to hide the texture, so printed word in different languages can be seen all over the visuals of the show. In the process of creating the play, the book-trees equivalence led us to discover moving images and metaphors that are reconnecting the two realms together,” they said of their creation which is inspired by Shel Silverstein’s children’s picture book, The Giving Tree (first published in 1964).
The story tells of the changing relationship between a boy and a tree as he grows up, ending with the tree being cut down and the old man looking back in remorse how the lure of money destroyed his once beloved environment. But hope springs eternal with a leaf sprouting from the cut-down tree.
With only background music supplementing the emotions
from one scene to another and the puppeteers acting with the marionettes, The Key Theater successfully delivers a poignant reflection onnature's generosity of
spirit despite human greed.
The audience—both young and old—get inspired to realize not just the loss of green fields to con
- crete jungles but also a green bud of hope that can still be present between humanity and the world.
From Manila, the production was also set for performance in Bohol then Macau and Japan.
When All Was Green has won several awards from all over the globe since its debut in 2013, among them Best Music Award in Children’s Theater by Assitej Israel; Award Of Excellence in the 2015 Peace and Intercultural Dialogue Festival in Armenia; Children’s Jury Award in the 12th International Puppet Theatre’s Festival in Katowice, Poland in 2015; Children’s Jury Award in 2016 VIRVAR International Puppet Festival in Kosice, Slovakia; Grand Prix and Dragan Radulovic Award for Dramaturgy in the 2016 Medunarodni Festival Lutkarstva Podgorica in Montenegro; The Tibor Sakalj Award in the 49th Pif Festival in Zagreb, Croatia in 2016; and Original Sttructure for the Poetic World Award in the 2016 Tandarica Festival in Bucharest, Romania.