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Emmanuela Kapokaki's puppet theatre show "The Snowman who didn't want to melt" based on a fairytale of the same title by Manos Kontoleontos recently won two international prizes. Her theatre company, Prassein Aloga, was invited to participate in two international puppetry festivals. The Harmony World Puppet Carnival Festival took place in Lodz Poland from 24 to 30 September 2016 and featured more than 900 performances. One of the festival's key aims was to help relaunch the art of puppetry in the 21st century. Emmanuela Kapokaki's performance garnered her the Educational Puppet Theatre Prize.
The "Snowman" show then travelled to Moscow from 4 to 6 November 2016 to take part in the Red Mood Festival for small companies and solo performances, winning the Best Direction and Production Prize. The festival's aim is to foster ties between various puppet theatre performers around the world, to inspire creative collaborations and broker the exchange of ideas.
Emmanuela Kapokaki graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette in Charleville-Mézières, France. In 1997 she founded the Prassein Aloga puppet theatre, and since then has staged more than 15 performances at her own venue and at other theatres, schools and festivals around the world. As she sees it, her productions do not emphasise the spoken word but the language of images, symbols and archetypes, creating an original spectacle where the actor and puppet interact.
