Go Figure! Festival for puppetry and visual performing arts in Oslo is a biennial with the first festival June 5-9, 2018. This year, Kloden is collaborating with the festival to present two performances; Aske by Yngivld Aspeli /Plexus Polaire and Made in China by Wakka Wakka. The festival is headquartered at Torshov in Oslo, and shows a diversity of the foremost national and international performing arts for adults, children and young people.
Go Figure! Festival for puppetry and visual performing arts, is a festival that both rocks and rocks. It showcases the very best in contemporary art in puppetry and visual theater. The program consists of Norwegian productions with great international success, as well as an American documentary film, a German intimate performance with a burlesque character, and a new and completely unknown Norwegian group.
Made in China
The award-winning theater company Wakka Wakka performs together with musicians from MiNensemblet in the black comedy and fantastic puppet musical MADE IN CHINA. After seven (!) weeks of sold-out houses on off-Broadway in New York, Oslo is finally next. Inspired by actual events, Norwegian-American Wakka Wakka takes a look at our ambivalent relationship with China in her familiar black humoristic way. With a slant on human rights and consumer society, the play tells the unlikely love story between a middle-aged American woman and her neighbor, a Chinese immigrant.
Baby pandas, dancing household equipment, 30 hand-sewn puppets, 7 puppeteers and five musicians on stage populate the fantastic universe. Wakka Wakka has been awarded and nominated for numerous awards such as Obie, Drama Desk and Unima USA's Citation of Excellence. They have toured Norway, large parts of Europe and the USA, and have performed in Cuba and China.
Made in China is produced by Wakka Wakka in collaboration with Nordland Visual Theatre. The production is supported by Arts Council Norway, Jim Henson Foundation and Eugene O'Neil Center. The script and direction is by Kirjan Waage and Gwendolyn Warnock.
ash
Ashes is a poetic and brutal piece of visual theater about how the forces within us can change from creative to destructive with uncanny speed. A story full of fire, of wildness, turmoil and love. The production is inspired by the Brage Prize-winning novel "Før jeg brenner ned" by Gaute Heivoll, which is about an arsonist who in 1978 ravaged the village of Finsland. Aske explores the fine line between madness and normality that young people walk.
Yngvild Aspeli is a Norwegian director, performer and puppet maker who graduated from the Institut International de la Marionnette in Charleville Mezieres, France. Plexus Polaire is based in France and is composed of performers from France and Spain.
Aske was produced and completed at Figurteatret in Nordland in 2014, and is a co-production with Compagnie Philippe Genty MCNN - Creation Centre and Production (FR) // The Mouffetard - Theatre of Puppetry Arts in Paris (FR).
Aske is a performance for adults (recommended from 14 years).
Tickets for both performances can be found here.