Search and filtres
French puppet company. The Arketal Company was founded in 1984 by Greta Bruggeman and Sylvie Osman, both trained at the Institut International de la Marionnette (IIM…
Russian puppet theatre, founded in the city of Arkhangelsk in 1933 on the initiative of Aleksandr Engelgardt, the artistic director of the Youth Theatre, who then headed it until the 1940s…
Character of the commedia dell’arte, second Zanni, probably of medieval origin. Tracing the origins of the name and existence of the character is extremely complex…
Polish puppet theatre founded in Lodz (Łódź) in 1948 by Maria and Henryk Ryl, and nationalized in 1950. At the end of the 1940s…
The Republic of Armenia (Armenian: Հայաստանի Հանրապետություն, Hayastani Hanrapetut’yun) is a mountainous country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia, bordered by Turkey…
German puppeteer, director, and screenwriter, disciple of Max Jacob. In 1922, Friedrich Arndt devoted himself to puppetry while at the same time pursuing business training…
Hungarian painter, puppeteer, puppet designer and theatre director. István Árpád Rév completed his studies in graphic arts at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Arts Academy of Düsseldorf…
French theatre laboratory founded in Paris by the actress Louise Lara and the architect Édouard Autant, active from 1919 to 1933. This research group was essentially dedicated to poetry and theatre…
Paraguayan woman of letters. María Luisa Artecona de Thompson held a degree in Science and Letters from the Universidad Nacional de Asunción (National University of Asunción)…
Cuban playwright and theatre researcher. Even though he specialized in works for children, such as El conejito descontento (The Unhappy Rabbit, 1974), El pavo cantor (The Turkey Cantor…
French museum created in 1937 in the basement of the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, open to the public in 1951. As early as 1944…
Iranian jigging puppets (French: marionnettes à la planchette). Arusaki is a genre where a human or animal puppet dances rhythmically on a fixed base accompanied by the musician-manipulator’s playing of the tombak (tonbak or zarb: drum)…
Israeli puppeteer and co-founder of Jerusalem’s The Train Theater (Teatron Ha Karon). After doing a BA in art history and theatre at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem…
Puppetry has been practised for many centuries in Asian countries, especially India and China where it is old and deeply implanted: these two cultures have influenced the puppetry of neighbouring regions…
Javanese puppet master (dhalang in Javanese, dalang in Indonesian) of wayang kulit purwa (shadow theatre)…
Argentine puppet company Asomados y Escondidos (Appearing and Hidden) was founded in 1979 in Buenos Aires by Silvina Reinaudi (b.1942) and Roly Serrano (b.1955). These two puppeteers began performing puppetry in Córdoba in the television programme…
An artistic process in which a new work of art is created from the combination of found objects, applied to the construction of puppets. The idea is to create composite puppets…
Hungarian troupe of amateur puppeteers. Founded in 1953 in Budapest by László Vízvári, Astra Bábegyüttes is one of the oldest and most important amateur companies in the country…
German puppet theatre founded in 1948 in Augsburg by actors Walter Oehmichen (1901-1974) and his wife Rose (1901-1985). The Augsburger Puppenkiste (Augsburg Puppet Box), which has resided since its founding in the historic building of Heilig-Geist-Spital in Augsburg…
The Commonwealth of Australia, a country in the Oceania region, comprises mainland Australia, the island of Tasmania, and a number of smaller islands. The Indigenous Australians include mainland Aboriginal Australians (who are believed to have arrived some 50,000 years ago)…
The more recent history of the Republic of Austria (German: Republik Österreich), located in Central Europe, dates back to the Habsburg dynasty when most of the country was part of the Holy Roman Empire…
From the Greek automatos, “moves on its own”, the automaton has a unique character. An exterior force manipulates other artificial beings, but the automaton exhibits its own life/energy and…
Canadian company founded in 1976 in Montreal. Théâtre de l’Avant-Pays was born from a meeting between puppeteers and actors wishing to share their experiences and…
Japanese puppet theatre company. Awaji, a small island in the Inland Sea near Kobe and Osaka, is historically speaking one of the major sites of Japanese puppetry…
Located in the Caucasus region and situated at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, the Republic of Azerbaijan (Azerbaijani: Azərbaycan Respublikası)…
Bulgarian designer, illustrator and teacher. A graduate in Scenic Design (Scenography) from the National Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia, Silva Bachvarova worked as a designer at the Durzhaven kuklen teatur Plovdiv (State Puppet Theatre Plovdiv…
American puppeteer. Bil Baird grew up in Iowa where he saw his first show by Tony Sarg in 1921. Having graduated from college in 1926…
Spanish visual artist, performer and director. In 1968, allied with a new generation trying to revolutionize Franco’s Spain, Joan Baixas and Teresa Calafell created in Barcelona the first Catalan professional puppet company…
Polish puppet theatre founded in Warsaw (Warszawa) in 1928 sponsored by educational associations under the initiative of Szczepan Baczyński and of Jan Wesołowski. In 1929…
Italian painter, linked to post-World War II movements (nuclear art, COBRA CoBrA, pop art) and crafter of marionettes for nearly a dozen productions staged with several companies…
American teacher, scenic designer, and director. As a child Frank Ballard was inspired by the work of Romain Proctor. After university studies in Illinois, Frank Ballard joined the faculty of the University of Connecticut at Storrs in 1956…
American puppetry institute and museum founded in 1987 in Storrs on the campus of the University of Connecticut (UConn). The Ballard Institute of Puppetry was initially a project to preserve the puppets designed by [Frank Ballard]…
Uruguayan poet and writer. The work of Adolfo Montiel Ballesteros is very diverse, and includes: poetry, novels, tales and writings for theatre for children, most notably Teatro menudo: títeres (Theatre Menu for Puppets)…
Hungarian director and dramatist. After having studied Acting at the College of Performing Arts in Budapest, Géza Balogh studied at the Academy of Arts (AMU) in Prague (see DAMU – Divadelní fakulta akademie múzických umění) where he received a diploma in puppetry directing and literary management under the teaching authority of Erik Kolár and Jan Malík…
Honduran puppet company. Teatro de Títeres Bambù (Theatre of Bamboo Puppets) was founded in 1990 in Tegucigalpa by the puppeteer-actors Edgard Valeriano and Danilo Lagos…
The People’s Republic of Bangladesh (Bengali: Gônôprôjatôntri Bangladesh), located in South Asia on the fertile Bengal delta, is bordered by India to its west…
Polish puppet theatre founded in 1947 in Bielsko-Biała by the painters Jerzy Zitzman and Zenobiusz Zwolski. Nationalized in 1950, the theatre was given its own theatre building in 1958…
French character. Barbizier appeared for the first time in Franche-Comté, more particularly in Besançon, in the 17th century, as a poor wine grower from the Battant neighbourhood…
A style of puppet manipulation using bare hands. The advances in philosophy and technique that had developed between World War I and World War II had been forgotten and puppetry had slipped into being a folk art and an entertainment for children…
Character and name of Spanish artist, José Silvent Martínez (1890-1970) from Santa Marta de los Barros, Spain. This Galician puppeteer was born from a French father and Spanish mother…
Spanish puppeteer. Designer, illustrator, painter, sculptor, and designer, Salvador Bartolozzi was a multi-faceted artist. He is possibly one of the most prominent Spanish puppeteers of the 1930s…
Swiss puppet troupe established in 1943 by the self-taught puppeteer, Richard Koelner (Basel, 1904-1993). The Basler Marionettentheater was officially inaugurated on March 27, 1944, the date on which Koelner and his cast of puppets and actors first opened at the Kunsthalle in Basel with Karl Simrock’s Puppenspiel vom Doktor Faust…
American puppeteer, director and teacher. Eric Bass began working with puppets while studying theatre at Middlebury College, Vermont. He worked for a touring puppet company in 1970 and for a time he was a street performer exploring the traditional Kasperle theatre…
Romanian painter, sculptor, and puppet maker, considered one of the founders of modern Romanian puppet theatre. Ioana Bassarab exhibited her work at the Salon d’automne in Paris in 1923 and in 1929…
American puppeteer, teacher and author. Marjorie Batchelder developed an interest in puppetry while teaching art at a women’s college in Florida in 1928. Her friendship with Paul McPharlin (1904-1948) began in 1930…
French theatre director who deeply revolutionized the theatrical language of his times. After many productions in several venues, Gaston Baty concentrated his activities at the Théâtre Montparnasse where…
School of architecture and art organized by Walter Gropius (1883-1969) in 1919 in Weimar (Germany), transferred to Dessau in 1925. Open to all the arts…
Mexican puppet theatre. Founded in 1986 in Monterrey by Elvia Mante and César Tavera, their mission for Baúl Teatro (Trunk Theatre) was to upgrade the art of puppetry in northern Mexico through systematically planned activities…
The Republic of Belarus (Belarusian: Рэспубліка Беларусь; Russian: Республика Беларусь), a landlocked country in Eastern Europe with Minsk as it capital, is bordered by Russia to the north-east…
Traditional crib (crèche) performed with puppets from the town of Alcoy, between Alicante and Valencia in Spain. The Belén de Tirisiti (full name Betlem de Tirisiti…