http://www.mikrocosmos.gr/index.php/10-create/123-2014-11-21-12-03-39
Translation: Maria Teresa von Hildebrand
So, she really shoulda said no?
Eleni Xylouri from Crete and the Lita Aslanoglou from Kalamata joined forces and, with their talent, creativity and love for puppets have created the puppet theatre Don’t Panic. They give us the following advice: Take a deep breath, relax and remember to go on living.
Your puppet theatre company dates from this year, you are emerging …
Well, yes, the company as such is brand new, but not our cooperation. We met in 2009 at the Ayusaya ! workshop (run by Stathis Markopoulos), and have since travelled and worked together on many occasions. Our trips have proved very fertile in giving us ideas for puppet shows, so creating a puppet company together was sort of inevitable.
Why do you call yourselves Don’t Panic? Is it because you see panic on the faces of our contemporaries?
Don’t panic is good advice for all of us. First of all because of what is happening now around us, but also with regard to each person’s private life, each person’s fears: not having –or having- money, having –or not having- a job, a husband, a wife, children, a house, a car, clothes…whatever, just DON’T PANIC: take a deep breath, relax and remember to go on living. As for us in our work there’s panic at every stage: from the writing of the script to the making of the puppets, the lights (that was perhaps the most panicky moment of all!), the music, the rehearsals … right up to the moment just before the curtain rises. Then –unless there is a hitch…- the feeling of panic leaves us… and takes hold of the public!
Tell us about your experience when travelling in Greece and abroad, together and apart, working with puppets in the streets, bars and festivals.
We have been working with puppets for some years now. Each experience is different. Working in the street has its unexpected aspects, both good and bad; festivals are wonderfully rich in impressions, people and shows; bars are places where in fact nobody expects to see us.
We have worked most of all in the street, in and out of festivals. The street is fascinating precisely because people don’t choose to come to see you, as in the theatre; they just happen to come along, they see you by chance on their way somewhere, they are surprised; if they want they stay or else they leave, if they want they give you something (money, food, an object) or don’t. An exciting experience but a difficult one, and having someone to share it with is very important; you share the laughs, you share the disappointments. Many times we have rejoiced in our good luck, when just an hour before, at some particularly difficult moment, we had wanted to pack it all up and leave.
What made you want to work with puppets? What is the greatest difficulty?
The art of puppet show combines a variety of skills, most of them, if not all, carried out by the puppeteers themselves: script, stage, music, lights, painting and carving the figures, making the puppets, the various mechanisms to put it all together and get it to work, then packing and carrying the stuff, playing live and … packing and carrying the stuff back again! When at some point you discover that you can actually combine all these skills, well, the challenge is irresistible. The greatest difficulty always lies in what you have to do at that moment, whether it is the script, the lights, the mechanisms or playing live. As soon as you’re finished with one task, you have to start on the next one.
How was She shoulda said no born? It’s your first project?
She shoulda said no is our first show. It resulted from the ideas we picked up during our ‘puppet’ travels to festivals and so on. After watching a number of shows, after acquiring a basic common experience and knowledge of what puppet theatre means, we felt the need to create our own.
The script simply happened: we had been watching and studying a great many thrillers and silent movies. It’s quite an experience to watch the thriller ‘The Screaming Skull’ while sipping your morning coffee! The title is that of a 1949 b-movie ‘She Shoulda Said No!’. It was one of those so-called cautionary or exploitation films that came out in the thirties and the forties to warn against the dangers of premarital sex and marihuana.
Your puppet show is unsuitable for minors, why?
First of all, we want to stress that art is suitable for people of all ages. A good performance is equally good for adults and children. In fact puppet shows used to be for all before we started squashing art into ‘adult’ and ‘children’ categories.
When we say that our show is unfit for children it is because the ‘sex and violence’ scenes are unsuitable to parents with children. Parents who come to our show, thinking they are taking their children to see a harmless puppet show, will inevitably be shocked. Not the children, ‘sex and violence’, especially in our comic thriller version, won’t embarrass or shock them. More to the point, the style and references in She Shoulda Said No is definitely closer to an adult’s sense of humour.
Is this then a different sort of thriller? Because you "promise" that the public will shriek in horror, avert their eyes in shock and shudder at the shrill sound of the Cretan lyra…
No, we promise the opposite. You will shriek, you will see sex scenes, you will try to find the profound meaning, you will shudder…because you are coming to see a thriller: the terrified heroine in a diaphanous negligee runs up and down on tiptoe, the murderer brands an axe and of course there is a happy end.
We promise but we also caution: Don’t Panic...
