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There have always been puppet theatres in Moscow. Big ones, small ones, family ones, mobile ones and even travelling ones.
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The puppeteers are mysterious people, always in the shadow of their puppets’ characters. During a performance the puppeteers hidden behind the scenes are much more emotional and possibly more interesting than actors on a stage.
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Breathing life into a puppet while playing behind a screen, crawling round the stage on all fours and screeching out words is all in a day’s work for these artists.
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One of the smallest family theatres is the TriLika. Just two remarkable actors run the whole show: husband and wife Victor Dragun and Yelena Martynova.
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In the 1990s the famous artist Georgy Burkov dreamed of bringing together young people from the provinces and planned to create a combined drama theatre, puppet theatre, film studio and theatrical school.
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In February Georgy Burkov visited the town of Irbit in the Urals region. Victor and Elena were working in the theatre here, and Georgy suggested that they move to Moscow.
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But soon after this Burkov died, and the artists had to survive on their own in this vast and unfamiliar city. They remembered their experience of working in the puppet theatre and founded a company – the TriLika.
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The theatre’s first production was a show for adult audiences, All the Same, based on a play by Michael Frayn. It was premiered in March 1994. This day marked the starting point for the theatre’s work. But this was a time when there were empty seats in the big and famous theatres, let alone in a theatre that didn’t have its own building.
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For more than ten years now the theatre has put on regular shows in the white room at the Maria Yermolova house museum. Every Saturday in the white room two people appear with an enormous trunk, set up a small stage and rig up lighting, and the show begins.
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In 2004 the TriLika theatre organised and ran the first “Moscow Holidays” international festival of small puppet theatres. The festival is still running today.
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