The princess escapes to the moon by walking on a ray of moonlight. Her father, King Cyprian XIII, promises a reward for he who can bring her back to earth. Kasperl and Seppl volunteer and leave on a rocket. They find the princess miserable, forced to cook and clean for the Man on the Moon. Thanks to a trap, Kasperl and Seppl succeed in escaping with the princess. The king thanks Kasperl and wants to offer him a gift, but Kasperl is content with a piggybank—he had to break his own to buy the rocket.

Glove-puppet

Young audiences

Bertl Hayde (Berta Gründler-Hetmanek)

Austria

Vienna

Printed

Rescue

Misfortune

Disillusionment

Tale

Gugelhupf

Birthday

Kitchen

Women's condition

Exploitation

Fantasy

German

Ein Handpuppenspiel für zwei Spieler

Kasperl

Seppl

Inhabitants on the moon

Trumpet (military man/woman)

Town crier

Night watchman

Metatheatre

Improvised scene

Dialogue with the audience

Address to the public

Flying machine

Disguised character (false identity)

Trap

Aria

Die Fahrt auf den Mond

Le voyage sur la Lune

On a beach by the Tyrrhenian Sea, a woman invokes the devil Serpentone. She wants to ask him to make her invincible and immortal so she can return to her village and take revenge on her compatriots who drove her out, calling her an old witch. The devil arrives, preceded by his deep, dark voice. He is ready to grant her immortality in exchange for something big, something you can see and touch. As the woman has nothing to hand, Serpentone gives her until midnight to find an offering before disappearing into the flames. The woman then prepares a potion in a big pot. Pulcinella, famished, passes by and plunges his head into the pot to eat the soup, but when he stands up again, he discovers he has a big donkey's head. Having effected the transformation, the woman gives the donkey to the devil who takes it to hell where he intends to kill it and make a drum out of its skin. But in trying to kill the animal, the devil frees Pulcinella from the spell. Pulcinella fights with the devil, kills him and escapes from hell to settle scores with the woman who turned him into a donkey. She is about to drink the wine the devil gave her to make her invincible. Realizing Pulcinella wants to kill her, she puts the blame on the audience: she turned Pulcinella into a donkey because the audience asked her to. The "cynical and ruthless" audience responds, saying the accusations are false and the woman is wicked. The audience, thus involved in the performance, finds itself acting out the scene recounted by the woman at the beginning of the show, where her compatriots insult her and drive her out. Pulcinella beats the witch to death with a broom, to much applause from the audience. The moral is that people who are different will always be hunted down without mercy.

Marotte

All audiences

Italy

Castellammare di Stabia

Electronic text

Otherness

Harassment

Hate

Sorcery

Malice

Magic potion

Devil

Immortality

Deal with the Devil

Comical

Dramatic

Italian

Old woman

Witch

Pulcinella

Public

Teresina

Off-stage voices

Apparition of the Devil

Metamorphosis

Fight

Enchantment

Micro-mouvements

Disappearance

Swazzle

Pulcinella e l'asino del diavolo

Pulcinella et l'âne du diable

Three young chicks speaking different languages travel together. They are looking for the sun, which has not been seen for three days. After meeting other small animals on the way, who guided them, they find that the sun is trapped behind a dark cloud. At the end, they make the sun shine again with the audience’s help.

Actor and puppet

Tabletop Puppetry

Spain

Alcoy

Fable

Linguistic diversity

Friendship

Theatre at school

Union

Didactic

All the characters in the play Sol, solet, on ets?

Catalan

Chick

Bird

Rabbit

Moon

Narrator

Talking animal

Personified object

Song

Intervention of the audience

Sol, solet, on ets?

Sun, little sun, where are you?

Alcide Cervi was a farmer. In 1934 he moved with his family to Gattatico, near Reggio Emilia, on a piece of land called Campirossi ("red fields"), which nobody wanted because it was infertile. He lives there with his nine children: seven boys and two girls. With hard work, they manage to make these fields prosper, and the family can afford to buy a tractor. The Cervi family is known for their anti-fascist political positions. After July 1943, when the Americans landed and Mussolini was arrested, all seemed well. But in November of the same year, a hundred fascists besieged the Campirossi house. The seven brothers try to resist, but they are arrested and eventually executed. As a sign of support and respect, Alcide Cervi never ceased to receive gifts from all sides: a Bible from the Fiat factory workers in Turin, a globe from the agricultural cooperative workers in Santa Vittoria, skittles for his grandchildren from some friends of the boules club. Finally, the puppeteer himself, Maurizio Bercini, wants to give Alcide a gift: a puppet with his features, with which he can transform pain 'into serenity and play'.

Die Fahrt auf den Mond

Ein Handpuppenspiel für zwei Spieler

Pulcinella e l'asino del diavolo

Sol, solet, on ets?

Cide

I doni di papà Cervi