Recommended age: 4+
Duration: 50 min.
The famous story of The Musicians of Bremen in our representation is presented in a different point of view. Our show starts where usually the story is ended: the animals already formed their band and – as famous musicians – they start to look back on their journey.
In the original story, every animal arrives to a point in their life where they have to choose wisely in order to stay alive, away from their ordinary life. In our adaptation, every animal has a specific disability to fight in order to start the evolution as individuals.
Composer: Bakos Árpád
Scenography and puppets: Tóth Andrea, Kiss Etele
Artistic director: Rumi László
Cast: Balogh Dorottya, Domokos Szabolcs, Kötő Áron, Mostis Balázs, Szűcs Tamás
Sound design: Domokos Előd
Light design: Almási Attila
Technicians: Balog Ferencz, Horváth Jonathán
Technical director: Kovács Ferenc
Trailer: https://youtu.be/mTXasNNONkM
After Miguel Cervantes
Cast: Ionuț Constantinescu, Radu Lărgeanu, Ramona Atănăsoaie, Andreea Bolovan, Ion Iurcu, Iulian Lungu, Călin Mureșan, Angelica Pamfilie, Adina Ungur, Robert Trifan
Direction: Ioan Brancu
Scenography: Elena Ilaș
Sculpture: Florin Marin
Music: Attila Nagy
Don Quijote by Miguel de Cervantes is the story of a man who goes to absurd lengths in the name of chivalry. Unwavering and possibly insane, Quijote and his faithful partner, Sancho Panza, boldly struggle against imaginary evils, to prove their value. This adaptation is a dynamic and powerful allegory of the hero’s naive mind projections, in order to frame his perfect, yet ephemere world.
Recommended age:10+
Running time:1 h 15 min
Date of the premiere: 21.10.2022
after Charles Perrault
Cast: Ionuț Constantinescu, Ion Iurcu și Iulian Lungu.
Director: Cristian Nedea
Stage design and painting: Elena Ilaș
Puppet design: Florin Marin
Music: Ion Iurcu
Singing coordinator: Arona Bogdan
The classic story is reinterpreted, director Cristian Nedea’s proposal respecting the recipe of a love story, but a cat one par excellence.
„For the Puss in Boots, the world is just scenery and people are just a necessary extra. The whole relationship with the master is seen here as a mere tool for the fulfillment of the cat’s destiny. And how could it be otherwise when the cat falls in love? Even though it has seven lives, here and now it is all consuming, against a backdrop in which empires are forged or crumble. The story is the story of the cat nation,” the director points out.
Recommended age: 3 +
Duration: 40’
Date of the premiere: 26.06.2022
After a story by Tohby Riddle
A show by Rachel Warr and Andra Ștefan
Non verbal show
Cast: Andreea Bolovan, Dana Bonțidean, Ionuț Constantinescu, Ion Iurcu
Scenography / painting: Elena Ilaș
Sculpture: Florin Marin
Music: Simon Roth
The Singing Hat is a wonderful story of a father and his daughter whose lives are changed when one day a bird makes a nest in an unusual place…. This causes them challenges for everyday life in the city, but it also brings them a new way of looking at the world.
The concept of the project is designed by Rachel Warr, from Great Britain and together with the team from Cluj they produced a genuine and delicate show, in which the spectators will uncover a unique perspective on the flow of life.
Beyond the turmoil and the agitation of everyday life, the two leading characters, discover together with the spectators a new aspect of inner life, raw emotions and what really matters.
A non verbal show that conveys profound meanings and feelings.
It has been a new way of working for everyone, and like the characters in the story, we have all had to think differently about how we connect with one another and the world. (Rachel Warr)
In this show, the hat was indeed a troubled one, being a challange for me but also for the entire cast. We had to work with the director, Rachel Warr, from distance, but we loved this show and we did our best. The story carries us towards our authentic self. (Andra Ștefan)
Recommended age: 5+
Duration: 40 min
Date of the premiere: 12.12.2021
by Matei Vișniec
Cast: Dana Bonțidean, Adina Ungur
Artistic direction: Varga Ibolya
Figuration: Cosmin Cîrlea
Scenography: Radu Lărgeanu
Painting: Elena Ilaș
Sculpture: Florin Marin
Music: Venczel Péter
“Pockets full of bread is an absurd, tragicomic play about conscience, humanity, and death. At the same time, the show is a criticism towards the moral qualities in which the modern human dwells.
The contemporary human being, obsessed with their self-made complex moral value system, doesn’t abandon the problems and the conflicts but doesn’t solve them either. They sit and debate. Filling their pockets with breadcrumbs, they throw them feverishly into the pit, instead of lifting up the helpless dog. They delay acting efficiently. They look for scapegoats, for possible solutions, make plans or delegate rescue plans. All their actions are taken from a comfort place, their chair, sheltered by their own theories, fervently shouting speeches about noble causes. Therefore, life passes around them, with its real dramas, without acquitting them from a guilty conscience. A betrayed humanity takes its revenge; the space feeds itself upon uncertainty and the smell of death.”
Varga Ibolya, artistic director
This play is a case of an everyday matter that has shifted into a metaphor. An example of the powerful force of a trivial event, which filtered through a reflection, gains metaphysical potential. It has happened to me, since then, to write starting from a mundane fact, but I never had such a compelling revelation, embedded with a dramatic situation brought up by such an impressive real context.
It is an important play for me, that brings me back to Romania, to the period in which I was a teacher and also a young writer, playwright and a poet and I thought that literature had both critical and denunciation roles. I am very pleased with the fact that this play survived, got beyond time boundaries, generational borders and passed beyond linguistic frontiers. When a play crosses three decades, maybe it grasped something about the human nature.
Matei Vișniec, in an interview written by Ada Maria Ichim.
Recommended age: 14+
Duration: 60 min.
Date of the premiere: 25.05.2021
after Virginia Waters
Cast: Ramona Atănăsoaie, Călin Mureșan, Robert Trifan, Adina Ungur
Figuration: Cosmin Cîrlea
Voices: Dana Bonțidean, Ionuț Constantinescu
Script and direction: Dana Bonțidean
Scenography / painting: Elena Ilaș
Sculpture: Florin Marin
Music: Attila Nagy
Rational storytelling is an under-explored and under-used tool in children’s education in Romania. In recent years, specialists from the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Babeș Bolyai University in Cluj have developed a series of stories that teach young children to build resistance to frustration, to cope with anxiety or anger, and to accept themselves. Puck Theatre aims to take over and expand this unique project by adapting stories for preschool children. The performance „The Tale of the Three Little Squirrels” was inspired by Virginia Waters’ book of rational stories for children, published in 1980 and published in Romanian in 2003 by the Romanian Centre for Cognitive and Behavioural Psychotherapies.
Here are some of the statements that the Rational Stories offer us as a tool in managing difficult situations, regardless of the age at which we face them:
I wish things could be different, but I know it won’t happen just because I want it to.
I can accept that things can happen to me in life that I don’t want, even if they are unpleasant, and I try to avoid them.
It’s very unpleasant that this happens to me, but it’s not the worst thing in the world.
I think I can handle such unpleasant situations.
It’s unpleasant, but I accept the fact that I can’t control the situation the way I want to.
It’s unpleasant, but not catastrophic to feel that way.
It’s unpleasant, but not catastrophic to think that.
The story of the three little squirrels, in the scenic vision of Dana Bonțidean, is an entertaining and funny show, in which each of us will identify with one or another of the characters, and children will discover that every problem, however complicated, has at least one solution, and this is a ‘rational’ one.
Recommended age: 3+
Duration: 45 min
Date of the premiere: 11.11.2021
after A Middsummer Night Dream by William Shakespeare
Cast: Ionuț Constantinescu, Andreea Bolovan, Ion Iurcu, Radu Lărgeanu, Ramona Atănăsoaie, Angelica Pamfilie, Iulian Lungu, Robert Trifan, Călin Mureșan
Director: Cristian Nedea
Scenography / painting: Elena Ilaș
Sculpture: Florin Marin
Music: Attila Nagy
This adaptation proposes a nonconformist view in contrast with the mainstream mise-en-scene but also it is the most suitable one. How else one could illustrate the unsetteling actions of the destiny over humanity? The world of humans is directly manipulated by the gods and by misterious forces, with a logic unknown to us. Here, the gods are pulling the strings in full view but humans cannot see them.
The Adventures of Puck is a show adapted after William Shakespeare’s play into a esentialized manner. It is a performance that addresses the young audience and is meant to wake their curiosity about the big culture of the world. It is an adventure of knowledge.
Puck, the elf, which is the patron of the children’s theatre in Cluj, becomes the guardian of the spectators thorughout differnt worlds: the world of gods, the world of fairies and the world of mortals. Animation theatre is used as a tool in order to better understand the intervowen fantastic realms. The world of mortals is represented by puppets in contrast to the world of gods and fairies. Symbol of fate, Puck, triggers magical experiences and chaotic situations, full of humour.
Recommended age: 10+
Duration: 60 min
Date of the premiere: 8.07.2021
Cast: Ramona Atănăsoaie, Ion Iurcu, Robert Trifan
Script, director and music: Ionuț Constantinescu
Directing assistant: Călin Mureșan
Scenography: Andra Ștefan
Painting: Elena Ilaș
Sculpture: Florin Marin
Bored by their life spent in a little cottage, Vasilache and Marioara decided that it is time to start a new journey. What they don’t know yet, is the plethora of adventures that are waiting for them, by traveling through both time and space.
Ionuț Constantinescu reframes and adapts the traditional fair theatre story of Vasilache and his wife Marioara, into a new context, with new characters, fantastic encounters and enchanted objects. This time, the main characters become explorers and come across, during their journey with God, the Devil, Death, Elvis Presley and many other characters that add humour to the plot.
„In general, in the fair theatre and especially in the context of Vasilache and Marioara plays, there are iconic characters, which always win the situations by using their cunningness and kindness. I kept this traditional way of portraying the main characters but I also added a certain ingenuity that is specific to curious people and knowledge seekers.
I wanted to ressurect the fair theatre genre, which unfortunately, was lately forgotten. The power of this genre lies in the esentialization of the moralizing message. Out of this emerges the impact that this kind of genre has on its viewers and also it is the dimension where the comic dwells.” – Ionuț Constantinescu, director
Recommended age: 5+
Duration: 50 min.
Date of premiere: 20.09.2020
Meet Palkó, the cheerful little boy, who has an endless fantasy. He usually plays in the garden, having trees and flowers as his closest friends. One day, while having fun in his own fantasy world, he meets Panna, the little scilla who has all kinds of magic powers, like riding a cloud. The two children become friends immediately and start their adventures from fairy tale to fairy tale.
Decor and puppets: Elena Ilaș
Composer: Áron Kötő
Directed by: Laura Pünkösti
Original scenario based on Patka Ildikó’ tales: Kincső Szakács
Directing assistant: Réka Giriti
Cast: Ildikó Patka, Áron Kötő, Balázs Mostis
Age recommandation: 3+
Duration: 45 minutes
What is going on? What is going on with me? Am I a child? Am I a grown-up? Or maybe stuck in between, halfway there? Is this normal? Am I normal? Is it okay to think about this? I’m definitely thinking about this. You too? Me too.
The performance operates with all the important elements of puberty to show all of you: everything that you are experiencing happens to others too. You share the same worries and troubles; you are not alone.
It reveals a montage of the three main parts of every teenager’s life: school, family, and love. Everything changes fast in a short period of time like this and keeping the rhythm is hard. But during the show, everybody gets a chance to take a deep breath and take another look at their concerns because, in the end, they may seem less frightening.
Scenario: Dorottya Balogh
Directed by: Dorottya Balogh, Balázs Mostis
Directing assistant: Emese Erdei
Composer: Előd Domokos
Decor, costumes and puppets: Dorottya Balogh
Cast: Dorottya Balogh, Balázs Mostis
Age recommandation: 14+
