The Magical World of Puppets in Veliki Tabor

During two Sundays, May 28 and June 4, 2023, the event The Magical World of Puppets in Veliki Tabor was held at the Veliki Tabor Castle. More than three hundred and thirty visitors watched four puppet shows on both Sundays and actively participated in three educational and artistic workshops.

At the beginning of the event, on behalf of the organizers, the head of the Veliki Tabor Palace, Renata Dečman, addressed the gathered visitors and presented the program that she had designed and prepared with Kruna Tarle, a theater and multimedia artist.

The artistic organization KRUNA TARLE-art from Zagreb performed two interesting performances in the program. Magda Henok, Tomislav Rožić and Patrik Gregurec gave excellent performances in the cheerful puppet show The Cow on the Wardrobe. Although the aforementioned show primarily addresses children with its educational message, thanks to the humor it abounds in, it also attracted the attention of adults and managed to cheer up and make all visitors laugh. In the multimedia interactive play Zagorje – Green Cradle created as part of the Fortresses Speak project, Ivana Škrlec also starred alongside the aforementioned. The aforementioned project is dedicated to nurturing the intangible cultural heritage of the Croatian Zagorje region, the Kajkavian dialect, music, legends and customs, and museum artifacts such as traditional toys and the like. The script and direction are by Kruna Tarle, who conceived the play inspired by Veliki Tabor.

Two puppet shows (The Dragon's Treasure and The Legend of Veronica Desinić) were performed by the puppet company Ioculatori, which has been operating within the Museums of the Hrvatsko Zagorje since 2006, and starred Andrea Brlobuš, Siniša Žnidarec, Nives Ćurković, and Tomislav Drempetić Hrčić with Lovro Brlobuš.

Three workshops on making puppets and masks using the plaster cast modeling technique were also held, led by Kruna Tarle, Goranka Moćnik Puceković, Magda Henok and Ivana Škrlec. At the workshops Secret Life of Castles and Little Forest Creatures, children showed their creativity by making stick puppets and finger puppets inspired by characters from legends. For adults, the workshop All the Faces of Veronika Desinićka was organized, where they made masks using a plaster cast of their faces. They found inspiration in the exhibition Veronika's Scarf by Kruna Tarle, which exhibited masks made of plaster and gauze.

The event was co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia. It promoted Veliki Tabor and the intangible cultural heritage of the Hrvatsko Zagorje.