Theatre: Speed and Sunglasses at the Puppet and Animated Forms Festival
Lisbon's May theatre scene reimagines classics with puppetry and bold visuals
Where do girls drive at 100 kilometers an hour, pick up cool guys hitchhiking by the roadside, slam on the brakes with fatal consequences, and wear sunglasses because they insist on going to the beach in scorching heat—only to find their boyfriend there with someone else? Where do guys keep saying, over and over, how unhappy they are, and everyone does all this while singing, as images flash by in a whirlwind of colors so vibrant they'd make the wildest umbrella-drink cocktails green with envy? At FIMFA, of course—when A Tarumba presents Crankies to Make the Cobblestones Weep (São Luiz Theatre, Lisbon, May 7–9).
For those still unfamiliar, A Tarumba is a Puppet and Animated Forms Theatre Company that has produced FIMFA for 26 years, with an artistic direction even wilder than that speeding girl—yet somehow, Luís Vieira and Rute Ribeiro, the duo behind it, never crash, never have a disaster. Never. Instead, they deliver some of the finest festivals Portugal has to offer, both in theatre at large and in the realm of puppetry and animated forms.
This year, for instance, three productions reimagine great literary works through distinct theatrical formats: Hamlet Is Me, by Teatro Praga, tells Shakespeare's play with just two actors and an array of objects—effervescent tablets, moisturizer, dental floss (Teatro Taborda, Lisbon, May 16–17). Loco, by Compagnie Tchäika, draws from Gogol's Diary of a Madman to create a show featuring a life-sized marionette operated by two artists (Teatro Variedades, Lisbon, May 22–23). And Karyatides, the company behind past productions like Frankenstein and Les Misérables, now tackles Crime and Punishment in a version using small figures, various objects, and a dramatic structure that plunges into Dostoevsky's profound universe (Teatro do Bairro, Lisbon, May 28–30).
On a more serious note, two productions under the Transport Project—of which A Tarumba is part—deserve attention. This European initiative brings together six puppet theatres to explore the impact of transportation on the contemporary world. Tipping Point, by Alfa Theatre, examines a fire on an oil drilling platform, while Departure follows a family losing their home in Slovenia's 2023 floods. Both are object theatre, featuring hyper-realistic miniature figures.
