BARBARA BULATOVIĆ – puppeteer, producer, art and stage designer, director:

 

Barbara Bulatović was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia to Miodrag Bulatović and Nuša Kansky- Bulatović. She discovered her passion for puppetry in early childhood, as a member of amateur troupe, mentored by Lojze Kovačič.

 

After studying English and Russian literature at Ljubljana University, she left Slovenia and got her bachelor degree at ESNAM- The School of Puppet Art in Charleville-Mezieres, France. She continued her studies and obtained her masters at the Akademie Muzickych Umeni in Prague (Czech Republic).

 

She joined Speakeasy pictures company from Edinburgh and worked with reffugies from the Balkan war 1991- 1999. These activities were meant to stimulate and motivate children, adolescent and adult refugees and help them to overcome  traumas from their past.

 

Having settled in Ljubljana in 1997, she has been independently directing, producing and designing many projects, performances and art installations.

 

She has developed  workshops for children, academic students, amateurs and professional performers, exploring the art of puppetry and the world of abstract.

Including workshops for people with hearing disabilities.

 

 

Her work functions as theater as well as exhibits — creations that tell stories as well as presenting as inventive, informative spectacles. 

 

Her productions are often "site specific", using ordinary environments in place of a traditional stage. An example is the motorized show, “Focus-Pocus”, (2006 adaptation of Raymond Queneau), which she staged in collaboration with the Association DRULUS on a Ljubljana bus, during a ride on a regular route.

 

Another example of her "site-specific" work is her comedic “John Barleycorn” (a Kralj Alkohol2002 adaptation of the Jack London novel), which starts as folksy outdoor street theater. Then the show moves indoors, into a theatre hall designed as a large semicircular bar room. 

 

At first, hero puppet exhibitions seem to be made from almost nothing, their complexity and sophistication slowly unveiling, such as her celebrated “The World  and Child”, (“Mundus et Infans”, Speakeasy Pictures /Ljubljana Puppet Theatre coproduction 1997), with which Bulatović first made her name as an inventive puppeteer. 

 

Bulatovic’s use of the puppet medium has been ingenious: traditional marionnettes convincingly appear, coming to life in a picture frame on a wall or being brought in on a tray by a waitress.

 

Her set design for a production of “The Flight of Icarus” (an adaptation of a Queneau short story, produced by Ljubljana Puppet theatre in 2003), in which the set itself showed her almost filigree artistic style, with complex animation rods which brought to life the manuscript pages in the production.

 

Barbara Bulatović attributes her inventiveness to her education  at the eminent French National School ofq Puppetry (ESNAM) in Charleville-Mezieres, then PRAGUE DAMU puppet accademy, but her talent also flows from her innate inquisitiveness, versatility and imagination.