Drama in Puppets or Puppets in Drama
Drama in Puppets or Puppets in Drama
Dear audience, we kindly ask you to turn off your mobile phones.
The team of the 14th International Puppet Theatre Festival for Adults “PIERROT” wishes you an enjoyable performance!
“We Also Play Romeo and Juliet”
Director: Stoyan Radev
Set Designer: Nikola Toromanov
Choreography: Teodora Popova
Composer: Mihail Shishkov
Photographer: Milena Stoykova
Cast: Tsvetelin Pavlov, Dilyana Spasova, Kamen Asenov, Rumen Ugrinski, Ventsislava Asenova, Marian Rangelov, Lyubomir Genchev
Text: Kamen Asenov, Stoyan Radev and William Shakespeare
Kamen Asenov, Stoyan Radev, and William Shakespeare! Surely, placing the name of one of the most brilliant playwrights in European theatre history last must spark curiosity…
It is rare to see a production of one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies, Romeo and Juliet. It is even rarer to see such a title staged in a puppet theatre! That is why, when Sofia Puppet Theatre announced that the premiere of “We Also Play Romeo and Juliet” would take place on May 10, 2024, my theatrical curiosity was piqued. Alas, for more than a year, I kept missing the show—as if in a game of cat and mouse. Until yesterday.
Darkness falls in the auditorium, music begins, and large black-and-white painted canvases appear. A comic-strip world unfolds, filled with drawings that guide us through the story we are about to see. A newly formed troupe of puppet and dramatic actors takes the stage, led by Tsvetelin Pavlov, who has the difficult task of quelling the conflicts between them. As he distributes roles for their new play Romeo and Juliet, “Her Majesty Drama”—embodied by Dilyana Spasova, Rumen Ugrinski, and Lyubomir Genchev—constantly self-promotes, insisting on playing only lead parts. Meanwhile, the good-natured and innocent “Puppets” try to defend themselves from the biting remarks of their dramatic colleagues and fight for larger roles.
Thus, after a series of quarrels and sharp exchanges, the puppet actors are assigned the Montague family, while the dramatic actors take on the Capulets. Time for the play to begin! The familiar figures of Romeo, Mercutio, and the Nurse appear as one-eyed paper cabaret puppets—characters resembling those from the animated film Monsters, Inc. more than Shakespeare’s originals. Unfortunately, director Stoyan Radev placed far greater emphasis on the dramatic actors’ presence than on the puppeteers. Although the Sofia Puppet Theatre troupe once again demonstrated their skill and ease in convincingly shifting between roles, some of the most iconic scenes of the Shakespearean tragedy—such as the deaths of Romeo and Juliet—were staged as purely dramatic, with puppet presence minimized.
Kamen Asenov, Stoyan Radev, and William Shakespeare! Should Shakespeare’s name truly be last? Yes—absolutely. For although the entire production is written in verse, very few of the lines come directly from the English playwright. If you expect “We Also Play Romeo and Juliet” to bring you close to the tragic love of the two young lovers, you are mistaken. Shakespeare’s story becomes overwhelmed by actor conflicts, family dramas, Spanish rhythms, tropical jungle settings, and Bulgarian folk dances. With the excessive in-jokes about the creative industry—understood mostly by insiders—the core narrative is entirely lost.
Although the show succeeds in making the audience laugh and creates strong interaction with spectators, it bears little connection to Shakespeare and could achieve the same effect without Romeo and Juliet.
Lachezar Yordanov
