Day 3 of the International Children's Theater Festival Subotica - report

On Tuesday, September 21, the third day of the International Children's Theater Festival Subotica, the competition program presented performances Bambi by the Kragujevac Children's Theater and Guli by the Galilean Multicultural Theater from Israel.

Play Bambi was performed on the Jadran Stage of the Subotica’s National Theater. This author's adaptation of a lyrical novel written by Felix Salten almost a century ago, is accompanied by live music played on several percussions. The play is about growing up and getting to know the world of the little deer, where the young audience experienced his childhood and the joys and difficulties of growing up.

"In the play, we deal with the relationship between man and nature in a very contemporary way. We are witnessing that people are taking less and less care of nature, that they undermine it and that they do not protect it. The play mostly deals with that issue, through the well-known story, understandable to children. Everything is made from natural materials since we are trying to reflect what we are talking about in the play, so that it has the charm of going to nature," said the main actor Miloš Milovanović.

Before the start of the play, an exhibition of puppets of the Kragujevac Children's Theater was opened, available to visitors every day until the closing of the Festival on September 24.

The play Guli was performed at the Children's Theater in Subotica, and in this production brings a story of the protagonist Guli who must stay with his almost deaf and mute grandfather overnight, until his grandmother returns. He is extremely worried about his grandfather's condition and does not know how to deal with him. However, his grandfather gives him a very special gift that frees Guli's world of imagination and helps him really get to know him.

"There is no classic message in this play, it is more like an experience. It contains a lot of imagination, since a lot of things happen. One of the possible messages is how to have a good time without looking at the screen, by playing and imagining", explained Pablo Ariel, one of the two authors of the play. "It is important for us to give children the opportunity to be creative, to understand and imagine what is happening in the play. When children watch TV, they are passive and just receive experiences all the time. We do the opposite - we give them small inputs, and then they have to be creative during the show. That way, the audience is much more present."

During the festival, in the Gallery of the Open University Subotica, the audience will be able to see the exhibition in honor of the Little Prince Award laureates, which exhibits works by Jovan Caran and Ludmila Konstantinova Hense. "The puppets I hung there are actually production surplus. Those playing in the performances cannot be obtained, because the policy of the house is to keep puppets from the performances in the repertoire at home-theater. I exhibited something that left behind in my workshop, so one puppet even got a head from some other. It is interesting that, even though these puppets are made of non-durable materials, they have survived for several decades", said Jovan Caran about his exhibited works.

The promotion of the 14th issue of the puppet art magazine NITI (publisher: Theater Museum of Vojvodina) and the collection of works Theater for Children - Artistic Phenomenon (book 11, publisher: Open University Subotica, International Children’s Theater Festival Subotica, Theater Museum of Vojvodina) is scheduled for Tuesday at 5 pm at the Hotel Patria. In the film program, at 5 pm, the repertoire of the Eurocinem includes My Family and the Wolf directed by Adria Garcia.

On the fourth day of the festival, on Wednesday, September 22, on the Jadran Stage of the Subotica’s National Theater, two plays will be performed in the competition program: Three Times King by the German Gruena Sosse Theater (12h) and Peter and the Wolf by the Children's Theater of Republika Srpska (16h).

Play Puppetpassionforkinglear by the Theater Karabaskа from Russia, which was supposed to be performed in two terms, on September 22 and September 23 at 12 o'clock in Deže Kostolanji Theater, is canceled. On Wednesday, at 5 pm, the presentation of 70 Years of Youth: Youth Theater Sarajevo by Dubravka Zrnčić-Kulenović will be held at the Hotel Patria, and at the same time in the Eurocinem, the audience will be able to watch film Bigfoot Family.