"Because Larissa...loves puppet theatre!"
I was born in 1977 and I come from Nea Moudania, Halkidiki, where I grew up and lived for eighteen years.I was lucky because I grew up in a place rich in artistic potential, with experiences next to inspiring people, with a longing for life and creation. Thus, the joy of expression through the arts took deep root in me.
I'm a child... of the lighthouse. What's a lighthouse? In those years in Nea Moudania our hangout was our cultural club which turned out to be the tallest and brightest beacon for me and many other children who had the seed of art planted in them. My childhood was full of music, crafts, theatre, dance and choirs . Also the Primary School at that time was functioning as an experimental school and therefore I had the opportunity to be taught drama and art classes in the classroom. At the same time I studied piano and music theory at the Conservatory of N. Moudania, participating in concerts that sealed in me a repertoire of music education. The cultural center also in Nea Moudania was the Greek Guiding Corps, which taught me to be autonomous and independent, to have confidence in myself and gave me meaning and direction in life. My involvement also with gymnastics taught me discipline.
At the same time, there was an artistic clarity in our house.My uncle played the clarinet in the Lighthouse dance group and we often played music together. My grandfather was also an amateur clown player and a great storyteller.He would set up bardes on the doors of the house and play clowns for us...magical, dreamy moments....
So all of this has helped me to form a multifaceted creative personality with many perspectives. My involvement with the arts and children's shows was a one-way street. Perhaps karmically, the puppet theatre came into my life, which expresses me completely. After all, puppetry is an art that encompasses all the others.
In Larissa since 1994 and I continued my studies at the National Conservatory where I got my degree, at the Municipal Conservatory and at the Papoulakos Conservatory playing piano and saxophone.In music teaching I incorporated storytelling.But even there I did not rest...I wanted more liveliness and vividness.
So in 2005 I created a model children's bookstore in which, guided by children's literature, we performed children's shows and puppet theatre for free for the children of the city. So many people would gather that we'd pull out all the books to fit the kids...
In 2010 I created the model children's literature workshop "The House of Sophoulis", a creative activity centre for children and parents at a time when KDAPs did not even exist as an idea.
In 2014 I took over the artistic programming of the Municipal Puppet Theatre of Larissa and the operation of the only Doll Museum in Greece. There I perform puppetry, make puppets, write scripts for the theatre, build the sets, create and implement educational programs for children and organize Puppet Theatre Festivals while participating in other festivals related to children and fairy tales. Some of the performances we have staged are many such as The Three Gifts, Mormoli, The Witch of the Bahlubitsa, The Three Little Pigs, The Gourd, The Little Pig, Aesop's Fables, The Spitfire, Chalvadenia, The Magic Beanstalk, The Green Beret, The Hobbit, Sleeping Beauty, The Dowager Dowager and the Dawn Treader, Oh what a world, children, The Decapitation, etc. α. At the same time, my dolls have been featured in short films, I have created a series of construction videos and 3d animation "The little girl with the mask".This year we are celebrating forty years of Tiritoba and we are organizing anniversary events.
The Doll Museum operates daily as a workshop as it also houses the space where the new dolls are made. The dolls hosted are currently 648 of which 300 were made by the creators of Tiritoba Sophia Foutzopoulou and Kostas Hatziandreou (1984-2010) and 348 by my own hands. ( 2014-2024). It is visited by hundreds of students after the performances we give daily for schools. It is open to the public often for festivals, puppet making workshops, seminars on puppetry as well as other activities held there amidst the history of Tiritoba captured in timeless puppet figures. We want it to be a museum that is lively, welcoming but above all... productive. Just as its creators wished.
Puppet theatre, as an excellent educational and recreational medium, tries to articulate its own distinct cultural voice, subverting, expanding and extending "classical ways" of artistic creation, stretching the boundaries of imagination and revealing the magical range of the art of puppetry. Our puppets are handmade, of various types and sizes, depending on the needs of each performance. Through a multitude of events, young and old alike come into contact with the art of puppetry, taking it one step further. Moreover, Larissa, with the Municipal Puppet Theatre Tiritoba, has been a pioneer in the development of the art in Greece since 1984 until today.
In Greece there is no school to teach the art of puppetry and this is one of my dreams, my goal and my destination is first and foremost to create a large Doll Museum to be the works of art of theatrical dolls that have already been created safe and to create a School of Puppetry, so that those who wish can study and engage in this art.
