Jože Pengov (1916-1968), director and artistic director of the Ljubljana City Theatre (today the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre), director, playwright, actor, writer, translator, publicist and pedagogue, promoter of puppet art at home and abroad, laid the foundations of modern puppet theatre in Slovenia with his work. He was respected abroad as an exceptional expert; for many years he was a member of the management of the international puppet organisation UNIMA. He encountered puppets at an early age in the carving workshop of his father Ivan, a famous Slovenian sculptor. He grew and matured alongside his brothers – an architect, painter and sculptor – and tried his hand at puppets on the marionette stage. At the age of twenty, he began performing in the singing-acting-entertainment duo Jožek and Ježek on the Radio Ljubljana programme and at various entertainment events. He became a member of the radio acting group and in 1938 a member of the Pavlihov druščina, which operated under the leadership of ethnologist Dr. Niko Kuret. In 1948, the Ljubljana City Puppet Theatre was founded, where Pengov took over the position of director and artistic director in 1950. This marked the beginning of his mature creative period and the beginning of the rise of this theatre.
The staging of Jan Malik's famous play Žogica Marogica (1951), a performance that still delights young and old, was a turning point. With the marionette plays Mojca and the Animals, Zlata ribica and Obuti maček, he took the theatre to the international audience of the Dubrovnik Theatre Festival (1955). He broke into the wider world with the guest performance of the play Zvezdica zaspanka by the Slovenian author Fran Milčinski at the Bucharest Festival (1958) on the occasion of the VI. UNIMA Congress, where the play was a great success. The play was soon translated into several languages, and the theatre was invited to the Bochum Festival. The play Ostržek, which was filmed by German television in Düsseldorf in 1961, was also very successful. Pengov's last great success on the stage of the Municipal Puppet Theatre was an adaptation of Otfried Preussler's fairy tale The Little Witch, which was filmed on film by television in Stuttgart. When he left the City Puppet Theatre in 1968, he began preparing Jan Wilkowski's The Stubborn One at the Dravlje Puppet Theatre. Unfortunately, it did not see its premiere, and the small theatre later took on the name of Jože Pengov.
Puppets, photographs, stage and costume sketches, and preserved audio and video recordings of Peng's performances depict an artist who understood puppetry as a theatrical art that can touch both child and adult viewers with simple means.
(Tina Recek, 20.5.2004, Delo)
Edited by: Matjaž Loboda and Francka Slivnik
Text authors: Jože Pengov, Matjaž Loboda, Ivo Svetina, Edi Majaron, Jure Pengov, Črt Škodlar, Peter Dougan, Mirko Mahnič, Mihaela Šarič, Lojze Kovačič, Albrecht Roser, Fritz Wortelmann, Milan Čečuk
Photo: Tone Stojko, Archives of the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre