Search and filtres

American director, producer, writer, and puppeteer. Brian Henson, son of Jane and Jim Henson, is Chairman of The Jim Henson Company, an award-winning television and film director…

Portuguese puppet company. The theatre was created in 1993, under the artistic direction of Luís Vieira, by a group of theatre, film, sculpture and art historian professionals who wished to bring puppet theatre back to life in Portugal…

Russian puppet theatre director, active in the 1960s and 1970s, representative of what is known as the “third type theatre” between drama theatre and puppetry…

Italian playwright, composer, librettist, theatre manager, machine designer and poet. Scion of a noble Florentine family, Filippo Acciaiuoli applied his great talent, enriched by the study of mathematics and by extensive travels…

Puppeter of Turkish shadow theatre puppetry, actor, conjurer-magician, and clown. Nevzat Açıkgöz was trained by his father, shadow puppeteer Irfan Açıkgöz (Hayali Camcı Irfan)…

To the actor’s incarnation of the theatrical character, the puppet adds another layer of fiction – that of making an object animate. When misunderstood this has led certain theoreticians of the theatre to exclude puppetry from the field of dramatic arts…

Argentine puppeteer. After having discovered the puppets of Javier Villafañe, Juan Enrique Acuña formed his own puppet group in 1944, and named it the Los Títeres del Verdegay…

Aesthetic Ideas on Puppetry in Asia
Written texts on Asian puppetry are limited prior to the 20th century. Major texts – like Sanskrit drama’s Natya Sastra (Treatise on Dance Drama)…

The art of the puppet has expressed itself in many ways, but we can extract, from this multiplicity of forms, two fundamental categories. The fist belongs to the “vulgar” world and often superimposes itself on the glove puppet family…

The arts of puppetry have been practised in Africa for a very long time, probably for centuries. Accessible documentation began at the beginning of the 19th century…

Estonian director. Rein Agur was one of the leading personalities after World War II of the Estonian puppet theatre world. As a representative of the bourgeoisie (born into a family of teachers)…

Iranian master puppeteer of traditional string puppetry, kheimeh shab bazi. Asghar Ahmadi was one of the last traditionally trained Iranian marionette performers…

Belgian theatre located in Liège, founded in 1972 by Françoise and Jacques Ancion. After practising various forms of animation with writers and visual artists from 1960 and manipulating all types of puppets…

French poet. Pierre Albert-Birot devoted an important part of his theatrical activity to the exploration of puppetry due to his childhood memories of having created puppet plays with his cousins in Angoulême…

Spanish writer and poet, whose dramatic work includes pieces written for puppet theatre. These can be divided into two parts. The first part is in a “colourist” and musical style…

Greek shadow puppet theatre character. Alexander the Great appeared in the karaghiozis (Modern Greek: Καραγκιόζης) at the end of the 19th century…

Hungarian puppet theatre founded in September 1949 in Budapest by the Mesebarlang troupe (Cave of Tales). In the era of State-owned theatres, and in contrast to most other communist countries until 1989…

Chilean actress and puppeteer. Ana María Allendes is an actress and has a rich experience in all the fields of performing arts. Attracted at an early age by the art of puppetry…

Polish puppet theatre established in 1937 in the Polish community of Opole (today in southern Poland) by Alojzy Smolka, its first managing director. The theatre’s members and artists were deported to concentration camps at the outbreak of war in 1939…

Bolivian puppeteers. Clara Altamirano de González (Quito, Ecuador, 1937) had her theatre début at the age of eight years in Ecuador, with two great authors of Spanish origin…

See Jaime González Portal and Clara Altamirano de Gonzáles and Jaime González Portal.

Argentine puppeteer. After studying at the workshop of dramatic art at the Instituto Nacional de Estudios del Teatro (National Institute of Theatrical Studies), Héctor Alvárez d’Abórmida founded in 1949 the company Las Dos Carátulas (The Two Masks)…

Panamanian puppet company founded in 1997 by Salomón Vergara, with Adriana Sautu as a creative contributor. Amano began by performing at children’s festivals. After researching and studying puppets…

Brazilian puppeteer, professor, researcher. Originally a librarian and a poet, Ana María Amaral, native of São Paulo, lived in New York (1959-1974) where she discovered Bread and Puppet Theater…

American museum based in New York City. The American Museum of Natural History has had puppets in its collection since it opened in 1896. There are currently over 3,000 puppets…

Company founded in 1974 in Alma, Lac Saint-Jean, a region of the Province of Quebec in Canada. The company’s mission is to promote the art of puppetry through research…

Company founded in 1976, in Alsace, by Luc Amoros (Oran, Algeria, 1956) and Michèle Augustin (Strasbourg, France, 1956). In all its productions, the Amoros and Augustin Company creates a unique language based on moving images and live music…

British puppeteer, environmental artist, designer, maker, performer, workshop leader. Meg Amsden has worked in educational theatre, dance, puppetry and film since 1975. Trained as a Laban Guild Recreational Dance Leader…

Turkish author and scholar of puppet theatre. After recieving a degree in law (Istanbul, 1950), Metin And studied in England for his MA, becoming interested in the arts…

Traditional Slovak puppeteer. Anton Anderle came from a family of itinerant puppeteers who started performing in 1919. His grandparents, Eva and Michal Václav, collaborated closely with the leading family of Slovak puppeteers the Stražans (see Stražan (family))…

Ukrainian director, actor, and educator, People’s Artist of the Ukrainian Republic. For the Ukrainian puppet theatre, Viktor Afanasiev was as significant a figure as Sergei Obraztsov and Mikhail Korolev were for the Russian…

A Portuguese overseas province for five hundred years, the Republic of Angola (Portuguese: República de Angola; Kikongo, Kimbundu and Umbundu: Repubilika ya Ngola) whose citizens are largely Bantu peoples – including the Kimbundu…

Romanian puppet theatre established in the city of Ploieşti in 1953 as Teatrul de păpuşi Ciufulici (Ciufulici Puppet Theatre) within the city theatre (Teatrul de Stat Ploieşti)…

Animation cinema is a special technique of making movies shot frame by frame, or stop motion. The majority of animation is made by drawings or photographs…

Peruvian puppet theatre. Established in 1976 in Huacho under the leadership of Mario Enrique Herrera Asín and with the participation of four puppeteer artists, the Centro de Teatro de Títeres y Cultura “Antarita” (Antarita Centre for Puppet Theatre and Culture) works primarily with glove puppets…

American puppeteer. Robert Anton studied scenic design at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh which led to his interest in making miniature sets from which emanated a strange and deeply personal atmosphere…

Swiss company created in Lugano (Italian Switzerland) in 1969 by Michel and Michèle Poletti. The couple had been involved with puppets since 1964. Michel (b.1943) had studied theatre…

Italian puppetry museum. The museum was founded in Palermo, Sicily, in 1975 as the Museo Internazionale delle Marionette by the Associazione per la Conservazione delle Tradizioni Popolari (Association for the Conservation of Popular Traditions) which itself had been set up by Antonio Pasqualino…

Dynasty of German puppeteers who worked in Dresden during the 19th and 20th centuries. The German Albert Apel (?, 1847-c.1906) founded in 1878 the Apelsche Marionettentheater (Apel’s String Puppet Theatre)…

Brazilian puppeteer, Álvaro Apocalypse dedicated his whole life to artistic creation and especially distinguished himself in puppet theatre. He studied visual arts at the Escola Guignard (Guignard School) in Belo Horizonte…

Romanian puppeteer. Gabriel Apostol graduated from the Puppetry Department of UNATC (Universitatea Naţională de Artă Teatrală şi Cinematografică National University of Theatre Arts and Cinematography) in 1994…

Bulgarian director and theatre manager. Vassil Apostolov trained at the national theatre and film academy (VITIZ/NAFTIZ); today, Natsionalna akademia za teatralni i filmovi izkustva (NATFA)…

Egyptian glove puppet character. With the head made of wood, large dark eyes enhanced with kohl, a moustache painted on the face, red clothing…

Iranian company, founded by Behrooz Gharibpour, producing puppet operas. Before creating Aran Puppet Theatre group, Behrooz Gharibpour formed Iran Kheimeh Shab Bazi Group to revive kheimeh shab bazi with both traditional and modern-educated puppeteers…

British string puppet company of the second half of the 19th century whose proprietor was Lambert D’Arc (1824-1893), who also owned an exhibition of waxwork figures…

The People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria (Arabic: الجمهورية الجزائرية الديمقراطية الشعبية; Berber: Tagduda Tadzayrit Tugduyant Tagherfant; French: Algérie; République algérienne démocratique et populaire) is a country in North Africa on the Mediterranean coast…

The Argentine Republic (Spanish: República Argentina) is located in south-eastern South America with neighbouring countries Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay…

Italian puppeteer. Giuseppe Argento was the son of “Cecé” Argento, who had himself been the pupil of Giovanni Pernice. Don Cecé had started his own business around 1890 and had travelled through many towns and villages in the Province of Palermo before establishing himself in Pernice’s theatre after the latter’s death (Corso Scinà on the ground floor of the Lo Monaco Sgaderi palazzo)…

Bulgarian director and puppet theatre manager. Kiriakos Argyropoulos is a graduate of the Natsionalna akademia za teatralni i filmovi izkustva (NATFA), (National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts) of the class of Professor Atanas Ilkov…

Key personality in the epic Mahabharata, therefore important in the puppet and shadow theatres of India and in South East Asia…