The Paper Pinter puppet show consists of four short plays by Harold Pinter in the form of shadow theatre, as in Turkish Karagoz theatre. Two actors operate paper puppets, with lights behind canvas.
This unusual performance is produced by the informal group ‘Scena CARINA’ from Belgrade, Serbia, comprising two professional actors, Rade Ćosić and Vladimir Tešović, film director Marko Kostić, visual artist/creator of paper puppets Aleksandra Zdravković and art director/producer Nataša Milović.
The performance will be held on Friday, 23 September 2011, at 5 p.m. at Prvi oder Prve gimnazije Maribor.
The language of the performance is Serbian (with English sub-, super- or sidetitles); however, the main medium is visual.
Victoria Station – one night in London, a taxi driver cannot move from his car. He cannot remember the main bus station in London – Victoria station, nor the eponymous symbol of British Empire. His colleague, the Controller, cannot understand a situation when ‘everything stops’. The Driver reveals that his passenger is a sleeping young female with whom he has "fallen in love" (possibly "for the first time") and from whom he refuses to part, even imagining that he will marry her and that they will "die together in this car".
Family Voices – A young man new to the city, tries to find his place in it. He writes letters to his mother, but he can no longer find a way to show her his true feelings. He cannot tell her about his real position in the hostile place where he now lives. The play deals with the problem of identity among people who are not prepared for the traps of the ‘civilized’ world.
One for the Road – a man listens to music while waiting for his next victim – Victor. He talks about candour in politics while he tortures Victor’s wife and child. Victor is being punished for his disobedience to the system of a totalitarian state (which could be anywhere).
Mountain Language – the system of state control is allowed to make mistakes. But before that, the system has generated a new rule: nobody can speak any language except the language of the capital city. Inspired by what really happened to Kurds in Turkey, Pinter wrote Mountain Language as an agit-prop play about the irrationality of the ‘civilizing process’, which is always based on injustice and irrational rules.