Le Entrevista a Laura Heit por Rafa [ENG]

«The Matchbox Shows» is the name of your presentation in the FIMFA festival (FIMFA Lx13 - Festival Internacional de Marionetas e Formas Animadas). How did you started using this curious medium of «performance»? I guess one could say, jokingly, that you are a smoker?

Oh, no I am not a smoker. I do love a glass a wine and all things miniature. I created this show after a long time working on very large scale spectacle theater, a process that was very collaborative and required lots of very large objects, like backpack puppets, stilt walking creature costumes, and masks. 

I wanted to create something small that I could rehearse by myself, and make by myself with very few materials. I have always liked Matchboxes so I used the boxes as the stage, and all of the puppets fit within them.

Your work resides, besides puppeteering, in animation, cinema and stop motion. What differences do you encounter between the two vehicles? Your shows are also «televised»...

I am a performer and filmmaker who uses puppetry and frame by frame animation as techniques. 

I find that the idea of - animation, or imbuing something with life- is at the heart of all I create, and the term crosses over these boundaries of theater and film. You will see there is the influence of Theater in my films and visa versa in my performances....

Every single one of your matchboxes contains a story, a play, in a kind of Pandora's Box set of reality. What stories, comedies or dramas, are you about to «unleash» in «The Matchbox Shows?

They are micro stories- some are very short 10 secs. some are longer and last a few minutes.  I write them from personal experiences, or dreams, or sometimes they are inspired by the a character that I have in my head. They're are many ghosts, a dancing banana, a painter, naked people, and an oracle...    

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Fotos por Sean Meredith