Beygjani’s Puppets at Serbia Festival

‘Suitcase and the Lapdog,’ a product of Deemak Theater Group, is representing Iran at the Subotica International Festival of Children’s Theaters held September 24-29 in the city of Subotica, Serbia.  The 40-minute puppet play will be performed on Tuesday, September 26 at 7 pm. It is written and directed by playwright, theater director and producer Albert Beygjani who has  designed the stage and puppets of the play. It is a free adaptation of ‘The Yalta Game,’ a short play by Irish dramatist and story writer Brian Friel (1929-2015) written after ‘The Lady with the Dog,’ a famous short story by Russian writer Anton Chekhov (1860-1904). The play is a musical comedy on amorous relationship. It is the story of a Russian woman and an Italian man meeting each other at a café of a railway station. In spite of their linguistic differences and all the unpleasant incidents they encounter, both eventually fall for each other. Beygjani has used life size puppets in the play. Each puppet is in fact a head and an upper body garment worn by a thespian. The play is accompanied by French and Russian musical compositions of the 19th century and also by Argentine tango music (also developed in the 19th century).