Giant puppets evoked the Tisza legends — Photo gallery
Giant puppets evoked the legends about the origin of the Tisza River on Sunday afternoon in front of the Móra Ferenc Museum in Szeged.
The performance, attracting at least one thousand visitors to Móra Square, was built around the cycle of water and the legends of the creation of the Tisza — the river that flows through Szeged. Artists and designers from seven Hungarian puppet theaters worked at a tense pace to create the giant puppets — a donkey, two weeping girls, and two bears — which were introduced to the public yesterday. As Ágnes Kiss, the director of the Kövér Béla Puppet Theater in Szeged explained, normally, such a project lasts 2-3 months, while this time, the members of the creative team had only 4 days to complete the puppets and learn how to handle them.
One legend tells that God sent a donkey to mark the line of the Tisza but the donkey constantly turned left and right to graze, that’s how the river's path became so winding. According to another legend, villains held the black and the white girl captive in caves. Their tears flowed down the mountainside, and thus the black and white Tisza merged. Two bears went wild in the Carpathians, according to another legend, but were turned into water by the magic of a good fairy.
The joint workshop project was initiated by the Kövér Béla Puppet Theatre. The flow of the giant puppets was accompanied by Álmos Gajda on the saxophone, while the winds of the Szeged Symphony Orchestra provided the background music of the Tisza. After their debut in Szeged, the giant Tisza legend puppets will visit seven Hungarian cities.
Photos: Szilvia Molnar / Szegedify
