This week saw a lovely puppet-theatre festival, with groups from Russian, Britain, Czech-land, Norway, and Finland, as well as the local 'host' one; one nice feature was that - despite the damp - the local passenger boat was taking audiences between the places where they were performing, and so you saw the same people each time, and it actually felt a bit like a real festival ...
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Absurdly expensive, though, since there were no season-tickets, so there weren't more than 30-40 people at each performance.
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Spent a nice afternoon with the English couple, she from Banbury, he from Wantage, though currently based in Norwich. They'd been advised by the festival organisers not to do what they usually do, and include a few lines in the local language, since "all Swedes understand English" - but of course they don't, specially not young children in country places, so they didn't get the participation they wanted, with the 'Where is he? - Behind you!!' and the 'Oh yes she will - Oh no she won't!!!' business ...
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so I gave them a couple of simple translations they could use, and we planted Edwin in the audience for the last performance, and it all worked fine ... he was with me in the morning before, and it was so funny while he was apparently completely absorbed in something apparently quite unrelated, to hear him quietly rehearsing to himself - 'Behind you!!' and 'Oh no she won't!!!' ...
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Apparently the Czechs had the most amazing puppets, based on Hieronymous Bosch's harrowing paintings (the Swedes had decided to advertise it as "based on Hieronymous Bosch's entertaining paintings"); but for me the Russians were the high point, five puppeteers and two technicians, with music and dance and a wonderful flow of funny stuff which took your completely out of yourself and left you totally carried away and longing for more afterwards ...