The "Schoolboy play" or " There is no subject" by Roman Paska

I  had read  quite a bit about this puppet play and its author, prior to having decided it would be one of the chosen plays to watch during the International Festival of puppets and animated forms, but  in no way did it correspond to what I was expecting.

It definately exceeded  all of my expectations. I was absolutely overwhelmed  by the whole setting of the scene - three tables and a number of throughly sellected objects, four amazingly expressive puppets on stage moved by two puppeteers, one of them the author of the play, who also gave voice to the puppets, inflecting it in three very distinct accents in English, so as to reinforce the origin and personality characteristcs of the very different schoolboy puppets (one of them being Hitler and another one Wittgenstein), as the sequence of scenes unfolded from table to table as if progressing in different scenes within the same scenario - a boarding school where "identity crisis happen to everyone from the most famous to the most notorious and the most ordinary of individuals".

The text was dense and deep with specks of humour, though the interspersed music (at the right times) helped to lighten the plot. There were moments in which I felt I was no longer watching a puppet play but back at the boarding school of nuns I was at, through childhood and adolescence, reciting well known poets,  wondering about the essence of existence and other problematic issues .

"The search for selfhood is a rite of passage we all have to endure" ... and that's what this play was about ... no subject and every subject.

Author and direction: Roman Paska
Puppeteers: Roman Paska and Gabriel Hermand-Priquet
Scenography and costumes: Roman Paska and Donna Zakowska
Lighting design: Stphen Strawbridge
Sound design: Paul Prestipino