Tilla Durieux sewing costumes at 27 Jurjevska Street for the National Puppet Theatre
From book "My First Ninety Years"
Zagreb, ca 1948
photograph, copy
MGZ fot. 25.787
Tilla’s post-war period was characterised by her work in the National Puppet Theatre (1946-1952). She made up for her inability to act by working as an artistic seamstress, creating costumes and puppets as well. A crucial and precious meeting was with Vlado Habunek, and Radovan Ivšić, just at the right moment. At that very moment a group of young people was turning into the Zagreb Puppet Theatre. After the first Sunday performances in the Franciscan Hall, as it was called, today the Komedija Theatre, and the prosaic teachers’ canteen in Varšavska Street, premises in Duga Street no. 36 were hired. After eighteen months of work, the City People’s Committee assigned the newly-formed group a hall in Tomislav Square, no. 19 (called Holy Jerusalem Hall). Thus in 1948 the National Puppet Theatre was set up, which had both the French Guignol type of puppet and the Europeanised Javan type of doll, or rod puppet. Tilla chose the material for the puppets (with consultation only about colour and type). She used everything from her own wardrobe: golden net, velvet, tulle, jewellery and makeup. She did the costumes according to facial traits and character, in the finer touches and details, looking at them after they had lain fallow a little to discover anything that need touching up, and finally put their wigs on their heads. Her creation of animal heads was particularly well received. She summed up her experience with puppets, about glove puppets, rod puppets, wigs, animal puppets, in a little book called The Puppet Theatre, which was printed at Ivšić’s initiative in 1951.
Literature: Šterk, Slavko. Tilla Durieux and Her Art Collection in Zagreb. Zagreb: Zagreb City Museum, 1986, p. 22