Spanish puppeteers at the 2019 Saguenay International Puppet Arts Festival

Two Spanish performing companies bring life to different world’s puppets at the 15th biennial of FIAMS: Onírica mecánica and Javier Aranda.

The 15th biennial of FIAMS — Festival international des arts de la marionnette à Saguenay (Saguenay International Puppet Arts Festival) will take place from July 23 to 28, 2019. 6 days with 45 different shows with 150 performances: indoor shows for all, adults and children, free entertainment and outdoor activities, shows in unusual places.

Spanish artists at FIAMS

Alice and the invisible cities by Onírica Mecánica

• On Thursday, July 25 at 9 pm.
• On Friday, July 26 at 8 pm.
• At Salle Pierrette-Gaudreault, 4160 Vieux-Pont, Jonquière, QC, G7X7W7.
• 50 minutes. Age 16+. Buy tickets.

Alice gets bored until she suddenly hears the footsteps of a rabbit and decides to follow it to its warren. There she will cross the door to an enigmatic world in which there is no time and nothing is what it seems. Alice will go deeper into doubts, desires, questions, fears and mysteries, in an initiatory journey through the Invisible Cities, imaginary territories populated by strange beings and some other inner monsters.

Alice and the Invisible Cities is a free-form version of Alice in Wonderland with a trans-disciplinary staging (projections, sound space, masks and puppets) that explores the imaginary created by Lewis Carroll from a contemporary perspective.

Jesús Nieto, under the name of Onírica Mecánica, builds poetic-mechanical-imaginary worlds for all those in love with the extraordinary. His pieces deal deeply with recent memory and our relation with technology. For 10 years he has been researching on different proposals for family audiences and adults, paying special attention to the interests, concerns and contemporary languages of nowadays teenagers.

Life by Javier Aranda

• On Friday, July 26 at 9:30 pm.
• On Saturday, July 27 at 10:30 pm.
• At Espace Côté-Cour, 4014 Rue de la Fabrique, Jonquière, QC G7X6J8.
• 55 minutes. Age 16+. Buy tickets.

Handmade articles have their own personality, hands as part of a being, as leading players, as special beings that create movement, emotion and life. A drifting basket, a trip… New life emerges from any corner, from any basket –valuable, singular and unique lives.

Javier Aranda, actor and puppetmaster, was trained at the Theatre School of Zaragoza. He has been working with different theater groups for more than 20 years (Temple Theatre, Arbolé Theatre, Gayarre Theatre, Drama Centre of Aragon) and has taken part in various short films. He alternates acting with his work as a puppet-master at the Javier Aranda Company, where he carries out personal research on the hand puppet and its relationship with the puppeteer.