Handa Gote: The Third Hand

The Handa Gote theatre group brings a surrealist puppet performance to D29 titled The Third Hand. This is another project dedicated to puppet theatre for adults - exploring its roots in the avant-garde and visionary artists, as well as in amateurs and artists from other genres.

The Third Hand creates a puppet microworld without narrative: just small fragments of situations and images open to the viewer's interpretation. Handa Gote works with numerous energetically charged objects - often found under unusual circumstances or inherited from ancestors - and assembles them into fragmented compositions referencing the theme of spirits and vanitas imagery. The group collaborates with a visual artist working under the brand kosmo_nauty on the visual design.

The visual inspiration came from the aesthetics of Vietnamese markets, Chinese shops, the visuality of Mexican altars and Day of the Dead celebrations, Japanese mobile theatre kamishibai, and the stage technology of dogugaeshi. The project builds on the group's own production Sapphire Head and draws further inspiration from Petr Nikl's experiments with the Mehedaha theatre, the puppet work of František Skála, the BKS group, Čestmír Sušek, Petr Šoch, and the works of Milan Grygar. One of the key inspirations is also the Czech puppet production Piškanderdulá and through it the tradition of variety puppet performances - including Paul Klee's puppets and the work of art brut artists.