Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Update: Ulrike Monecke's photo from her Manning-Sanders play


Earlier this year, I mentioned an email conversation I had with Ulrike Monecke of Germany, who wanted to make a "puppet play" based on the Ruth Manning-Sanders tale "Unfortunate," which is featured in "A Book of Enchantments and Curses." Ulrike wrote:1
"I'm a puppet player and I want to make a new play, and I find Manning-Sanders and her humor beautiful. ... I found the original story, but the story from Ruth Manning-Sanders is much nicer. I want to know how and where she found the story, and something about her thoughts and how she works. I like her words."
I couldn't really offer anything useful regarding Manning-Sanders' methodology. But I asked Ulrike to send me a picture from the adaptation of "Unfortunate," which is what you see at the top of this post.

Her show had its premiere on April 3, and Ulrike said it's for "children from [age] 7 and for adults."

Trying to find some more information about Ulrike and her theater, I came across the German-language website Westflügel and used Google Translate to translate this biography of her:
"Ulrike Monecke studied puppetry at the University of Drama 'Ernst Busch' in Berlin and is a trained carpenter. Since 1998 she has worked as a freelance puppeteer etc. as a member of the Theater o.N. (Zinnober) in Berlin. In 2006 she founded her own company, Theater Ozelot. Guest performances have taken her to the most important German figure theater festival. She was nominated for the Berlin Theatre Prize Ikarus and gives workshops for school children and puppet theater students."
And you can see a nearly eight-minute video of Ulrike's awesome work here on the Theater Ozelot website.

Check back tomorrow for a full roundup of other recent reader comments!

Footnote
1. I cleaned up her English -- which is way better than my German -- very slightly for publication.

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