The Academy of Fine Arts in Rome is pleased to host Debora Hunt, a mask creator and puppet theatre performer since 1973.
Institutional greetings:
Cecilia Casorati, Director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome
Hunt trained in New Zealand and New York, where she studied contortionism, ballet, modern dance and pantomime with students who graduated from the Ecole Jacques Lecoq.
She founded Maskhunt Motions, a nomadic workshop of experimental theatre with objects, theatre of the futile and the useless. A teacher of puppet theatre, construction, manipulation and staging, her poetics focus on and explore puppet theatre both in the theatre and outdoors, such as street theatre, social and entertainment theatre, and political theatre.
She explores unconventional spaces, creating miniature theatres for a single spectator or large group performances in the open spaces of cities or in natural environments. She creates puppets, giant masks and shadow theatre.
Her school in Puerto Rico, where she has trained many Puerto Rican artists, is now recognised and supported by the major institutions. She often works in San Juan, where she carries out her political and activist work in the city streets, together with the Papel Machete collective. The latest collaborative work between Deborah Hunt and Papel Machete is “On the Eve of Abolition”
Born in New Zealand, she has lived in Puerto Rico since 1990. She has performed, collaborated and taught in New Zealand, the USA, England, Japan, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, the Windward Islands, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Serbia, Norway, Germany, Poland, New Zealand, Venezuela, Cuba, Singapore, Jordan, Ecuador, Taiwan, Korea, Colombia and Brazil.
The keynote address will be given in English, and a translator will be present.