Suomen Unima ry:n lehti - Unima.nu

Nukketeatteri 2/2010
17
In the latest years Marina Motaleff has made
her own solo puppetry. She writes, directs
and performs small scale puppet theatre
shows touring around with two suitcases
full of puppets, objects and props. Marina
Motaleff´s main field of work is however acting
in drama theatres, films and television.
She is also a renowned teacher and theatre
educator.
Bilingual puppetry in Vaasa
Puppet theatre Teatteri Peukalopotti -Dockeatern
Tummetot (Theatre Little Thumb) was
founded in 1976 in Vaasa. Artistic director
Kristiina Hurmerinta (b. 1950) has also
made avantgardist visual performances for
adults under the title of Pandoran näyttämö
(Pandora´s stage). Ms. Hurmerinta was also
the director of Vaasa International Puppetry
Festival in 1980-1990 and the primus motor of
long-term puppetry courses, which both have
had a deep effect on the development of Finnish
puppetry. The theatre was bilingual from
the very beginning, which ment also extensive
tours in the Nordic countries.
Peukalopotti Puppet Theatre´s first artistic
leader was Finland-Swedish actor Simeon Rabinowitsch,
who was working in Vaasa Municipal
Theatre, which gave the young puppet
theatre group it´s facilities and resources.
Kristiina Hurmerinta started the exploration
of modern means of expression in puppetry
and object theatre. She invited artists of all
fields – dancers, painters, musicians, scenographers
– to work with the group, which soon
became a modernist and innovative puppet
theatre never seen in Finland. Hurmerinta
had two great examples in puppetry: one of
them was the Finland-Swedish Mona Leo and
the other one Polish Anna Proszkowska, who
became her partner and leader of puppetry
education programmes in Vaasa. Peukalopotti
Puppet Theatre closed in 1996 with a magnificent
ritual feast Pidot/Gästabud96.
Actor Lasse Hjelt (b. 1947) was in the core
team of Peukalopotti theatre for ten years in
1979-89 alongside his work at Vaasa Municipal
theatre. He was also an active puppetry
educator like Kristiina Hurmerinta sharing
his knowledge of puppetry and drama acting.
Lasse Hjelt moved to Turku in 1989, where he
worked as an actor in the Municipal Theatre
until 1995. Both in Vaasa and Turku he has also
dramatized and directed puppet plays for
drama theatres as well as for many Swedishspeaking
amateur puppetry groups. After having
returned from Turku back to Vaasa Municipal
Theatre in 1997 Hjelt has continued
making puppet theatre both as an actor/
puppeteer and director.
Nowadays Vaasa has again a bilingual puppet
theatre, on an amateur basis. In 2006 Italian
Cosimo Galiano and Finnish Kirsti Rautamo
founded Nukketeatteri Pikku Aasi - Teatrino
del Ciuchino (Puppet Theatre Little Donkey).
The members of the theatre - teachers and
artists working in different fields in Vaasa –
have produced several plays, like The Princess
of the North and Sea Robbers – in Finnish
and Swedish mainly with hand and rod
puppets.
Not far from Vaasa, in the town of Närpes,
amateur puppetry has been very active in
the 1980s, when the Association of Women
for Peace founded in 1982 their own puppetry
company. Local teachers Ritva Granholm
and Brita Hannus-Gullmets used puppetry as
means of peace education for children during
ten years. The members of Närpes Puppet
Theatre participated in many puppetry festivals
and courses in the 1980s and early 1990s
and toured around Finland-Swedish regions.
Inspired by Mona Leo
Mona Leo has inspired many other Finland-
Swedish puppeteers, one of them is Kati Bondenstam
(b. 1939), who started making animations
to the Fennada Film in Helsinki. She
studied graphic arts at The School of Design
in Helsinki in 1960s and saw Mona Leo´s performances
as well as Czech animations by
Jiři Trinka. In 1970 Kati Bondenstam made
puppetry programs for Finnish Television
and its Swedish Programme Unit using glove
puppets. In 1974 she met a librarian Cita
Reuter and founded an amateur puppet
theatre Dockteater Cit-Kat, which toured
around Helsinki and Nyland regions with their
shows for five years. In 1980 Kati Bondenstam
started working with Barbro Wallgren, who
had been doing puppetry by herself. They
toured six years under the name Hux-Flux in
the Swedish-speaking kindergartens, schools
and libraries, visited even Åland Islands in
1982, when The Bluebird-company arranged
a puppetry festival there. Barbro Wallgren
continued as a solo puppeteer with her Dockteater
Kamurkan after Kati Bondenstam concentrated
on her work as an arts instructor.
Semiprofessional and
amateur puppet theatre
The Swedish-speaking amateur puppetry was
flourishing in the 1970s and 80s like the Finnish-speaking
ones. Many of the groups were
born within libraries, like Dockteater Rosetten
in 1975 at Karis Library founded by
its director Rose-Marie Malm. She has written,
dramatized and made puppets for tens
of small performances since then until recent
years working with her colleagues at the library.
Likewise was born the bilingual Nukketeatteri
Olipa kerran…. / Dockteater Det var en
gång…. (Puppet Theatre Once upon a Time)
in Porvoo in 1981, by the initiative of the legendary
librarian Anja Pirttilahti. The group,
which has been led also by Irmeli Holstein and
other library officials has a repertory of 5-6
puppetry plays, directed mostly by professional
theatre directors from Finland, Russia and
Estonia.
Mervi Tammi, a teacher, visual artist and writer
from Espoo is a semiprofessional puppetry
artist, who has been making her own shows
Lasse Hjelt
Rose-Marie Malm.
Kati Bondenstam
and led puppetry courses in Swedish and Finnish
since 1982 Her solo theatre Mervis Nordiska
Dockteater (Mervi´s Nordic Puppet
Theatre) has been touring intensively in the
Finland-Swedish regions and also in the Nordic
countries. In recent years she has made
several puppetry projects with the schools of
Espoo, where she lives.
In Turku Swedish-speaking amateur puppetry
flourished in 1988-1997, when a group of
kindergarten pedagogues had a theatre group