Roman Paska & Massimo Schuster
Dieu!: God Mother Radio
Florence Gould Hall At the French Institute/Alliance Française
September 11, 12, 13, 17-20

Adaptation, Design, and Direction: Roman Paska
Performed by: Massimo Schuster
Performance Assistant: Eric Poirier
Set Design Associate: Scott Pask
Costume Designer: Donna Zakowska

Dieu!: God Mother Radio was originally created and presented in Paris in May 1998 as a co-production of Theatre 71/ scene Nationale de Malakoff, the Festival Il Teatro e il Sacro of Arezzo, and Massimo Schuster¹s Theatre de l¹Arc-en-Terre, Marseille, and was also presented in English at the Stockholm City Theatre for Stockholm ¹98, European Capital of Culture.

The puppets in this production were built by Slovakian artists Jana Pogorielova and Anton Dusa, refashioned for the show by Roman Paska¹s New York workshop. Two 19th century traditional Czech marionettes can also be seen in the show.

ROMAN PASKA is a theater artist distinguished for his continuing commitment to puppet theater. Since 1984 he has created and performed a series of solo works with puppets, collectively called Theater for the Birds, for which he is now considered to be one of the outstanding puppet artists of our time. Two of these, Line of Flight, and Uccelli, the Drugs of Love, were chosen to represent American puppetry at two consecutive UNIMA World Festivals (Dresden, 1984, & Nagoya, 1988), and in 1992, his production of The Birds in Charleville-Mézières was presented as an entry from France at the 16th UNIMA Festival in Ljubljana. A third solo work, The End of the World, premiered at the first New York International Festival of Puppet Theater, presented by the Jim Henson Foundation at the Public Theater. The second New York Festival, in 1994, saw the American premiere of his unusual adaptation of Strinberg¹s Ghost Sonata, originally created in Stockholm, where it won the international Critics¹ Award at the First Swedish Biennial of Theatre. Other projects have included The Shadowy Waters at Abbey Theatre, Dublin; Lorca¹s Yerma at the Teatro Alameda in Seville; Moby Dick in Venice with Lyn Austin¹s Music Theatre Group. He has been awarded a Sirena D¹Oro in Italy, several Citations of Excellence form UNIMA-USA, and the Alan Schneider Directing Award form Theatre Communications Group.

MASSIMO SCHUSTER is one of the most renowned European puppeteers. With his own troupe, the Theatre de l¹Arc-En-Terre, he visited over 50 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, and took part in numerous festivals including Venice Bienniale, The Festival d¹Automne A Paris and Singapore Festival of the Arts. Born in Italy in 1950, Schuster graduated from Piccolo Teatro¹s prestigious school in Milan. He started to work as a puppeteer with Peter Schumann¹s Bread and Puppet Theatre. For his productions, he regularly enrolled artists from different backgrounds such as painters (Enrico Baj, Herve Di Rosa), sculptors (Richard Di Rosa, Nino Cuticchio), composers (Gino Negri, Lorenzo Ferrero), and writers (Anthony Burgess, Tzvetan Marangozov). His solo performances are characterized by a great dynamism and extreme dexterity to give voice to numerous roles in each play. As a director, he created pieces in France, Poland, Belgium, Bosnia Herzegovina and Ethiopia. As an essayist, he published several articles in professional magazines and he is also the author of five books. He is a former teacher at Charleville-Mezieres¹ Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts de la Marionnette, a member of UNIMA¹s (Union Internationale de la Marionnette) Executive Committee and was awarded the Ordre de la Grande Gidouille by the College de Pataphysique.