Based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Steadfast Tin Soldier

In this DARKROOM, objects, actors and spectators leave memory imprints of events from their lives and events from Andersen's stories. Andersen's display of imagination is distinctly puppet-like, as his objects always act as subjects. If a soldier falls off a shelf, he falls because he wants to run away. Darkroom explores the properties of objects from their own perspective and brings them to life. Rhythmic text, expressive musical passages, the relationship between minimalism and cacophony, contrasts between the atmosphere of a tea ceremony and live animation. See the world from the perspective of tin soldiers who never wanted to be soldiers.

Matija Solce, a renowned and award-winning puppet director, actor, puppeteer and musician, holds a PhD from the DAMU Academy in Prague. His work is closely intertwined with music and theatre, so his puppet performances are also interactive musical compositions. Often in the form of object theatre, they contain precise rhythmic animation with a fragmented dramaturgy, through which the audience becomes part of the theatrical experiment and is constantly in the process of discovering the unexpected.

The Ljubljana Puppet Theatre is one of the partners of the European project Puppets & Design (P&D), alongside Gorizia's CTA (Centre for Theatre Animation), the Czech Studio Damúza and the Istituto Europeo di Design (European Institute of Design) from Spain. The aim of the project, which brings together puppeteers and industrial designers, is to breathe soul into ordinary, everyday objects and give them a whole new meaning and, above all, an artistic context within object theatre. In order to earn a soul, a life and a destiny, objects must transcend their limiting materiality and utilitarian dimension.

Part of the European project Puppets & Design