Mikropodium, what's that?

On Saturday July 9th, I helped out at
the "I love Harue Project" Kids International Festival in my town. I was asked to run a"corner". At my corner, kids tried singing Polish songs with me. I picked two easy songs and incorportated gestures. it worked out ok, except many of the kids were shy about singing. There was an "Alice's tea party" corner were kids and parents could have tea and cake with Alice and the Queen from "Alice in Wonderland." Other corners had games, balloon animal making, salsa dancing, and a corner about Jordan. There were also two clowns that juggles, walked on stilts, and entertained the crowd. The Kids International Festival was tied into the Mikropodium puppet performance at Heartopia Harue, which was the main event.

I hadn't heard of Mikropodium puppet theatre before, so I was happy when I was offered a ticket to the show. Mikropodium is a type of Hungarian puppetry. The puppets themselves look as if they are made of wood. They are painted and dressed, and the puppetier manipulates the figure using a number of metal wires that are attached to the puppet. The puppets are rather small, and most can fit in the palm of a hand. The puppetier wears all black and stands at a podium that is also sent in black. On top of the podium a small Mikropodium stage is placed, that is the stage that the puppets use. However, the puppetier also moves the puppets in the air for flips and jumps. The show is set to music and the movements of the puppets are co-ordinated to the musical scores that are played, so the puppets do not speak. I'm happy I went to see the performance. I didn't plan on it because I thought it would be too childish, but actually it's very artsy.

The performance wasn't very long, maybe about 30 minutes. It consisted of four or five scenes. There were two scenes about a clown, one about two fish, and two about a ballorina. After the Mikropodium there was another puppet show. The second one was performed by a puppetier from Japan. It was more of the kind of puppet shows I remember as a kid. Well, it was except for the story. The story was about rats and sumo. It was actually really cute, and I was suprised that I could follow all of the Japanese that was spoken. I think both performaces were great, and although it was a day of kiddie events-- I had fun.