Dear reader,

In your hands is the first issue of KuklArt – your magazine for puppetry. The writing team, assisted by the ardent Editorial Board, made the first issue with the conviction that the Bulgarian Puppet Theatre needs its own periodical edition which will summarize the directions and problems of the puppet theatre process in our country, critically (uncompromisingly, but lovingly) review what is happening on the stages, to store the accumulated experience, to inform about everything that  happened in our puppet theatre during the past period (so over the years will accumulate a kind of database of our puppet theatre), to inform about the work of our colleagues abroad, to theoretically rationalize the searches and even to predict future efforts and discoveries in puppetry. Our ambitions are great. Greater than our capabilities today. At least in that sense, KuklArt is a magazine with a future.

The decision to publish the magazine was made by the Union Internationale de la Marionnette – UNIMA, Bulgaria. The name KuklArt is proposed by Prof. Nikolina Georgieva.

One of our ‘secret’ goals is the very existence of the magazine to motivate writing for puppet theatre, which in our country is in an obvious crisis (both qualitative and quantitative). But this ‘side effect’ – very important for us – will eventually be able to manifest over time.

As you can see, this could really be your magazine. And it can be written only on the wings of the responsiveness and concern of all puppeteers, of all theatricals.

When we talk about making and writing for puppet theatre, we will make an effort to be – when necessary! – unsympathetic, we will compare our experience with the achievements of the world. We will try to follow those exactingness and illusoriness, about which in 1928 Victor Shklovsky wrote his essay ‘The Hamburg Measure’:

              The Hamburg measure is an extremely important concept.

              All fighters, when fighting, dodge and lie on their backs on the orders of their impresario.

              Once a year, the fighters gather in a Hamburg inn.

              They fight with their doors closed and the curtains down.

              Long, ugly and difficult.

              This is where the true class of fighters is established – so that they do not falter.

              The Hamburg measure is needed in the literature.

              According to the Hamburg measure, Serafimovich and Veresaev are gone.

              They do not reach the city.

              In Hamburg Bulgakov is by the carpet.

              Babel is a lightweight category.

              Gorky is suspicious (often out of shape).

              Khlebnikov was the champion.

              Let’s try – together! – to go on the road to Hamburg…

Nikola Vandov
Editor-in-chief