Lightwave Theatre, a visual puppet theatre company

Stage director Cristina Ion and puppeteer Petru Stratulat set up an independent visual puppet theatre company.

Luana Pleşea, 22.08.2015, 14:33

Young stage director Cristina Andreea Ion and puppeteer, Petru Stratulat, a former journalist, two years ago set up an independent visual puppet theatre company, with life-size as well as oversize puppets.

Cristina Andreea Ion: “I graduated from the Faculty of Acting Puppets and Marionettes, then I got a Master’s degree in Animation Theater Directing and I was a member of a troupe doing puppet shows, both for children and “grown-ups”. Then, Petru and I had that wish to establish a visual puppet theatre company. I had a show I directed for my dissertation exam and which had been short-listed for the World Puppet Carnival in Indonesia. It was a show about Vincent Van Gogh’s life. There the only puppet in the show was Vincent, a life-size puppet, The rest were actors, it was dance-theatre. I could not get to the carnival as I needed the money for the trip, but I said we had to do something to move forward. And step by step, we put together a team. What gave us steam was the fact that my show had been selected in Indonesia. And we thought that if the show compelled recognition there, how about doing something here as well. “

They called the company Lightwave Theatre and have so far put on two performances for the grown-ups. With these shows, they have already been invited to take part in international festivals. “Reflection” was their debut performance; it was an impressive story “told” with no words, about a woman and a man who succeeded in rekindling the flame of their life together in the garden of their home, trying to get over the experience that had set them apart from each other.

Lightwave Theatre’s debut performance, which was the second directed by Cristina Andreea Ion, was also her second show that received an invitation to the World Puppet Carnival in Indonesia. That kind of recognition provided confidence for the founders of the company, yet they had to get more involved in the promotion of their productions, because at the moment, there is no such thing as a target audience for the adult puppet shows.

Petru Stratulat: ”We need to show them what we’ve got on the Internet, footage, pictures, and after that they start being curious. But if you just tell them ‘why don’t you come over to a life-size puppet show for adults’ they don’t know exactly how to react. Actually, every day for about 4-5 hours, we work hard to promote our show on TV, on the radio, in the papers…Not to mention Facebook, which is at hand, but there promotion is more and more difficult. And in the long run we somehow reached many people, and those people came mainly out of curiosity or because they were ”dragged” by friends who already knew about us. And since we saw how amazed they were after the shows, we realized it was all right, we had a niche we had to cover, we had an auspicious start.”

The interesting thing is that the niche covered by Lightwave Theatre targets people of all ages, says director and puppeteer Cristina Andreea Ion.

Cristina Andreea Ion: “I initially expected our audience to consist mostly of young people. Then I noticed there were also older people who came to see our shows and who were more delighted than we expected them to be. Children, young people, parents and even grandparents have come to see our shows, because everybody can learn something from them.”

Independent theatre companies need to be supported financially in order to survive. And when there are also big dolls that need to be manufactured for a show, costs increase significantly. At least for the time being, Cristina and Petru have managed to overcome the financial obstacle.

Cristina Andreea Ion: “We financed our first show, entitled “Reflection”, for which we used four dolls, from our own money. We have constantly improved the show as we collected the money. For the show “Lover Physics” we posted a crowdfunding project on the Internet. We used the money we collected to reward all those who contributed, as each donor got something in exchange for his or her contribution. Some got tickets to the show; others got Iulian Tanase’s book “Lover Physics”, with the author’s autograph”.

People who contributed 100 euros received in exchange three roles in the preview of the show. Through crowdfunding, Lightwave Theatre managed to raise 1260 euros for the “Lover Physics” show, out the 3000 euros they needed. The artists had to adjust to the smaller budget. Nevertheless, they presented the show at several festivals, such as “The Bucharest Fringe Festival”, “The International Animation Theatre Festival,” staged by the Tandarica Theatre in Bucharest and the “Puppets Occupy Street” Festival in Craiova.

The artists will participate with the same show in the “Izmir Puppet Days” in Turkey, held between March 5th and 22nd. On this occasion, they will enjoy the state’s support for the first time as the Romanian Cultural institute will cover their transport expenses.

In September, Lightwave Theatre will present their show in Bulgaria. Until then, on April 25th in Sibiu, central Romania, they will attend the “Breathe Theatre” festival, a theatrical marathon of 25 hours. In 2016, if they get some financial support, they will take “Lover Physics” to Thailand and Indonezia, where for the third year in a row, they have been invited to attend the World Puppet Carnival.