World harmony festival Thailand
In November 2016 we had the chance to go to Bangkok to participate in the Harmony world Puppet forum organised by Semathai Marionette Arts for Social Foundation. It was organised as a much bigger festival with over 40 companies from around the world. Unfortunately 2 weeks before the event was scheduled the king of Thailand passed away and the nation was put in a state of mourning. Consequently the festival was postponed and will now be happening in Mid January 2017.
Because we had already made arrangements we decided to go to Thailand anyway, and as we were not the only company to be in the same predicament, the organisation quickly managed to put on a forum where the puppet companies could show off, share ideas and participate in workshops. It actually turned out to be a mini festival, where not only we were able to perform in the Bangkok cultural and arts centre, but got to see some amazing marionettes performance from Myanmar, ventriloquism from The Philippines, Thai traditional shadow puppets, and an extraordinary demonstration of a traditional Thailand puppet art form that combines dance and puppet manipulation with 3 very precise and trained performers. The forum lasted for 4 days where the organisation looked after us extremely well and even managed to squeeze in some some sight-seeing
