«BUILDING A TABLETOP PUPPET»
WORKSHOP WITH POLINA BORISOVA

Saturday March 18 - Friday March 24 2023
Place: Figurteatret i Nordland (aka. Nordland Visual Theatre), Stamsund, Norway

For: Professional puppeteers who want to deepen their knowledge of puppetry.
Required: Professional experience in the performing arts and committed attendance for the full duration of the course.

Language: English
Max 10 participants

Workshop fee, travel expenses up to 600€ and housing in Stamsund covered by NVT.

Submission deadline: Dec 15, 2022.
Apply via produsent.fin@nfk.no

Application requirements:
Short motivational letter, maximum 150 words
CV

Selected applicants will be invited to the workshop. The selection will be made by NVTs artistic director together with Polina Borisova

Course objectives:
This workshop is a 7-days initiation to a tabletop puppet. You'll be invited to design, build and animate your own puppet character, discovering and mastering numerous skills and techniques, including technical design, polystyrene and foam sculpting, conception of controls and articulations, paper mache, dressing, painting and an approach to manipulation. Mastery of these bases can become a reliable foundation for your creations, giving you the possibility of experimenting, inventing new techniques and adapting them to your artistic needs.

***
Puppet Theater comes today in a variety of forms, styles, concepts and techniques. Growing at the crossroads of arts, it constantly continues to push further its boundaries, engaging dance, circus, object theater, digital arts ...and a whole bunch of other stuff. But in the midst of all this the PUPPET remains as impressive and contemporary as it was in biblical times.

Making a puppet is a complex and exciting task. Familiarity with even basic puppet building skills provides support for your most daring creative impulses. If you've always wanted to make puppets or have been looking for a new puppetry experience, this is your opportunity to get started.

Polina Borisova

POLINA BORISOVA

Graduated from the St. Petersburg State Theatre Art Academy, Department of Puppet Theatre, on speciality “puppet and stage design” (1996-2001), and author of a thesis on “Influence of puppetry on children's mental development", in 2005 Polina came to France to attend ESNAM, National Superior School of Puppet Arts in Charleville-Mézières (2005-2008).

A dozen roles and hundreds of puppets later... She is settled in Toulouse, expanding her scope of activities to animated films and teaching.

Today Polina is an Associated Artist to Pupella-Nogues Company and a pedagogical director of "The tool box" - puppetry training program at Odradek - Creation, Training and Development Center for Puppetry Arts.