Kövér Béla Puppet Theater closes 22/23 season

Kövér Béla Puppet Theater closed the 2022/23 season with a press event on Wednesday, July 5.

Ágnes Kiss, the director of the puppet theater, presented the finances, programs, visitor numbers, and other insights about the 77th season for the members of the press and the municipality.

Even despite the energy crisis-induced compulsory winter closure, the season was intense, with 172 own performances and 60,411 tickets sold for these.

In addition to their own shows, the puppet theater also hosted 61 guest performances, which were seen by 31,498 people. Forty-six performances were held at external locations, these were attended by 44,435 spectators.

Among the highlights of the season was the Egy kupac kufli — the puppet show adaptation of the TV and book series of the same name — which was so popular that it would be continued in the next season.

Another highlight of the season was the SZINkópé Festival, held at the end of August 2022 at Újszeged Liget. The two-day festival featured 12 performances and 17 other programs and welcomed visitors from the capital and even from abroad.

The summer of 2023 was characterized by the 10th Theater Olympics, which was organized in Hungary and brought select performances to all corners of the country. Szeged partnered up with the puppet theaters of Békéscsaba and Kecskemét to host a wide variety of Hungarian and international shows.

International guest performances in Szeged

Talking about the international guest performances, the director of Kövér Béla Puppet Theater revealed that she was very happy to host foreign artists and shows in Szeged, as these encounters work as a kind of cultural exchange and professional injection for the local artists.

"Foreign artists have a different point of view, different thoughts, and work with a different methodology, and I think this is super important because they bring a cultural injection with themselves which we can profit off. We can get inspired by all their ideas, approach, and professional attitude while experiencing how to create freely." — explained Ágnes Kiss after the press event.

The director named some of the highlights, starting with the multidisciplinary artist Yael Rasooly, who opened the Theater Olympics program series in Szeged with her award-winning show Paper Cut and held a workshop for the artists of all three Southeast-Hungarian puppet theaters.

Another highlight of the Theater Olympics in Szeged was the Tengerhab Gyereknap, a three-day puppetry and street theater festival held on the last weekend of May. "Here, we had various foreign artists with a broad spectrum of shows. For example, we hosted a Catalan playground with various magnetic toys and games built from the most unexpected objects. They created a huge interactive playground — around 300 m2 big — which turned out to be one of the most popular attractions of the festival."

The director also mentioned José Manuel Valbom Gil, a Portuguese artist who managed to create a fantastic connection with the audience during his show Dom Roberto. Tom Greder's Panorama Kino Theater was also one of her favorites because it opens up an awful lot of layers of meaning and moves the mind and heart of the audience in such a way that is very rare — and much needed — these days.

A Zeppelin, with the crew of the Catalan La Baldufa Theater, flew over the streets of Szeged on June 17. This was one of the most popular performances, attracting large masses to downtown Szeged.

Ágnes Kiss also explained that these guest performances provide excellent opportunities to build a long time relationship with the artists. They are already planning to cooperate with multiple artists who performed in Szeged during the Theater Olympics and invite, for example, Tom Greder's or José Manuel Valbom Gil's other performances to Szeged.

The Kövér Béla Puppet Theater will open the 2023/24 season on the first weekend of September, with a different version of the SZINkópé Festival held at the puppet theater.

Photos: Szilvia Molnar / Szegedify

Related: Check out our interview with Yael Rasooly and the 2022 SZINkópé Festival Photo gallery