TEHRAN -- Iranian stage director Behruz Gharibpur met with Stefano Giunchi, artistic director of the Italian Arrivano dal Mare Puppetry Festival at which event he was awarded the Sirene D’oro Prize.

They both agreed to perform joint projects in the future; Gharibpur told the Persian service of ISNA.
Gharibpur was honored during the festival (September 4-8) in Cervia, Italy. The prize is granted to artists or other individuals who have made a contribution to “illuminate puppetry in the world.”
“We talked about conducting joint research on the two Iranian traditional puppet show formats of Kheimeh Shab-bazi and ‘The Bald Champion’ (Pahlavan Kachal) and we actually did the primary process,” he said.
Kheimeh Shab-bazi is a traditional Persian puppet show which is performed in a small chamber by a musical performer and a person called a morshed (mentor). The dialogue takes place between the morshed and the puppets. The methods used in staging the performance distinguish it from other types of puppetry.
The festival “Arrivano dal Mare” which literally means “Arriving from the Sea” also hosted Gharibpur’s workshops on the sidelines of the event. The workshops were based on the three puppet shows of “Ashura”, “Rustam and Sohrab”, and “Macbeth”.
Gharibpur will be making another trip to Italy in the coming weeks to perform the “Ashura” puppet show.
He said that Italian artists have relatively little information about tazieh and this play gives them the opportunity to become more familiar with this traditional art form of Iran.
He also continued saying that several Italian artists would like to attend the back stage performance of “Ashura” to watch the method of the performance.
The Italian artists have expressed hope that their traditional puppet theater of marionettes which has been gradually fading away after the death of marionette puppeteer Vittorio Podrecca would be revived, Gharibpur remarked.
This would be a good start for joint collaboration between the Iranian puppet show troupe Aran and Italian artists, Gharibpur stated.
A group of 100 previous winners of Sirene D’oro Prize will get together during the 35th edition of the festival next year.
Several luminaries, including Dario For, Tom Stoppard, Hoichi Okamoto, Renato Nicolini, Leoluca Orlando, Emanele Luzzati and Margareta Niculescu are among the winners from previous editions, but Gharibpur is the first Iranian to have received this prize.
Photo: Behruz Gharibpur among some of his marionettes