The Republican Puppet Theatre - Tashkent
The Republican Puppet Theatre features two halls – the Grand Hall and the Small Hall, where two troupes of artists perform: Uzbek and Russian. The Grand Hall is equipped with special seats on two levels, designed for both adults and young visitors. The road leading to the puppet theatre is closed to traffic, so you need to take this into account before visiting and understand that you will have to walk a little from the "Prospekt Kosmonavtov" metro station to the theatre doors. The puppet theatre's repertoire is quite diverse: over twenty plays are staged based on everyone's favorite fairy tales, such as "Cinderella", "Aladdin's Magic Lamp", "The Golden Key", and others. Popular are original productions that recreate the traditions of puppet shows, such as "Caravanserai", "Chodir Jamol", and others. All performances are colorfully designed using various techniques, for example, glove puppets, suspended puppets, wooden puppets, lighting techniques for marionettes, amphitheatres.
The theatre's creativity was awarded in 1999 in Mexico City with a special prize for work on the aesthetic education of children. The theatre has participated in many international competitive festivals in Germany, Turkey, India, France, etc. Moreover, its productions were always voiced in the languages of the countries hosting the competitions. The theatre building was built in 1979 and today it is one of the bright landmarks of Tashkent. The theatre's foyer is decorated in the form of an eastern magical city made of colorful majolica. During intermission, young viewers have the opportunity to run along the paths of a fairytale castle or visit a beautiful courtyard with a view of a blooming garden with a marble fountain. The theatre's special pride is the museum, on whose display shelves are displayed puppets by many foreign countries.
The museum's puppet collection includes exhibits of ancient Indian puppets made of wood and natural leather, Javanese puppets – the progenitors of reed puppet mechanisms; the rarest water puppets from Vietnam; graceful marionettes from Burma; Italian Punchinello in a mask, and others. Also in the museum, the national Uzbek character puppet Palvan is kept, who was invented at the beginning of the last century, he is a joker, a merry fellow, sharp-tongued and kind-hearted. A separate area of the museum displays various souvenirs from many countries and tells about the history of the emergence of theatrical traditions.
