The rosemary flower - Princeptotilau

The Flor romanial

Presentation

In this show, we want to return to the essence of theatre: an actor and a story.
The actor is a puppeteer who travels the world with his portable stage carried on his back, like a backpack. The story is one of the most beautiful tales in Catalan folklore: The Flor Romanial, in the version collected by Father Antoni Maria Alcover.

The Flor Romanial is a tribute to the history of glove puppetry and to Catalan storytelling tradition. The show is based on the desire to revive the old portable puppet stages, which a single puppeteer would carry and travel with from village to village (on foot!) telling tales with their puppets.

This tradition was very popular in China, but it was also widespread in Europe and was brilliantly revived by the American puppeteer Bruce Schwartz in the 1980s. We have created a Catalan version, telling the tale of The Flor Romanial, accompanied by traditional music from the Balearic Islands (drawing from the traditional Ibizan repertoire of ball pagès and bagpipes, featuring flute, drum, bimbau, castanets, conch shell, and xeremia).