wide awake supporting program: "Puppet Theater - Art of Resistance" with Daria Ivanova
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Daria Ivanova is a dramaturge, puppeteer, and professor. She has worked at the Kyiv Academic Puppet Theatre and was involved in the training institution for puppetry art in Kyiv. She currently lives in Düsseldorf and continues her research in connection with her home university as part of a program for artists from risk areas.
In her study "Puppet Theater – Art of Resistance," she deals with the cultural resistance of Ukrainian puppeteers during the Soviet occupation from the 1920s to the 1990s. Ivanova reconstructs the pieces, texts, as well as the visual and scenographic means of that time – and shows how puppet theater became a form of silent protest.
At the center is the Christmas crib (vertep), a traditional Ukrainian puppet theater that was banned in the Soviet Union. Precisely because vertep is deeply rooted in Christian culture and Ukrainian identity, its ban was particularly significant. Nevertheless, puppeteers held on to this form – as an artistic act of resistance.
