Trip Report: Milissa Orzolek shares her experience with UNIMA's Passport Program

"In Finland, we start on time," said Perrine Ferrafiat, a member of TeatteriQO, a Frano-Finnish puppet theatre company, right before starting their show Susi pöksyssä (The Wolf in Underpants). Thanks to a UNIMA passport, I attended  the 10th edition of SAMPO Festival, based in the center of Helsinki. The hub of the festival is Nukketeatteri SAMPO, which has a cozy space with a store, cafe and theater. At night, the cafe turned into SAMPO Festival Club, with drinks and live music. The first night of the club featured a presentation on a history of Canadian puppetry by Louise LaPointe, current UNIMA president and founder of Festival de Casteliers. The second night of the club featured an artist talk between Elina Lajunen, a Finnish puppet theater artist and director, Mariasole Brusa, the Italian director and dramaturg of GOLEM - and mud is the world by Teatro Del Drago and Alice Laloy, the French artistic director of Pinocchio(live)#3 by La Compagnie S'appelle Reviens. Pinocchio(live)#3 was my favorite performance of the festival; the show has two teenage musicians setting the rhythm for ten adults to take ten kids and transform them into puppets. It is about power and manipulation, authoritarianism and rebellion, childhood and trust. Other memorable festival moments include: the director of GOLEM talking about the 2023 Romagna floods in Italy that inspired her show twenty-four hours after the devastating flood in Nepal last month; the Ukrainian company Knutkit taking their bows with a Ukrainian flag and telling the audience that there was an alarm in Kiev at that exact moment; watching Transport: Fasten Your Seatbelts about Elon Musk gifting someone a flight on a spaceship as in real life SpaceX is trying to buy the coastline of Vermillion Parish in Louisiana; watching Transport: Tipping Point about the congressional hearing of former BP CEO Tony Hayward about the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill and learning at the end of the show that Tony Hayward is still in the petroleum industry.

I loved being at this festival. Helsinki is beautiful. All the venues are within walking distance of each other. The atmosphere was cozy and the audiences were generous and engaged. Susi pöksyssä (The Wolf in Underpants) was about prejudice and subverted expectations. After the show was over, Ferrafiat said, "Theater only happens when we're all here." Which, I believe, just so happens to be the purpose of the UNIMA passport.

Nukketeatteri SAMPO

puppets from Arctic Tall Tales (La ruée vers l´or)

Susi pöksyssä (TeatteriQO)