Husam Abed (Dafa Puppet Theatre)

Recommended for artists of all disciplines interested in tapping into biographical source materials

Join Dafa Puppet Theatre’s Husam Abed for a workshop on the company’s approach to adapting biographical material into performance. Dafa Puppet Theatre views theatre as a public practice. DPT co-founder Husam Abed invites members of the community to find inspiration in their stories and gives them the techniques and tools to express them through puppetry. Theatre then becomes not about entertainment only, but a way of self-expression and the glue that binds the community together. The creative process is using documentary methods focusing on finding intimacy and sharing memories through exploring and working with materials, objects and body to explore themes that concern workshop participants.

Needed materials: natural materials, found objects.

Husam Abed is a Prague-based multi awarded Palestinian Jordanian theater director, puppeteer, producer and musician, specializing in alternative and puppet theater and devised multidisciplinary theater. He is currently undertaking a Ph.D. at Bath Spa University in the UK, researching refugee visibility through puppetry and object theater. He holds a Master of directing for alternative and puppet theater from the Academy of Performing Arts (DAMU), Czech Republic. Husam is a co-founder of Dafa Puppet Theatre, where he sees theater as a public practice. He leads theater projects for children, youth, and adults worldwide, and focuses his work with refugee communities. He has directed performances in Czech, Jordan, Bahrain, Austria and Hong Kong. His shows are invited on a regular basis to international festivals. He is a co-founder of LIV’in Festival in Prague and Ya khayyal Theatre Lab. for refugees and local youth, a curator for IDEA festival (International Dance Encounter Amman) and an active member of Karama Film Festival for human rights in Jordan.