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Spanish puppet character. Don Cristóbal is the Spanish version of the Neapolitan Pulcinella and the French Polichinelle. As such, he is the principal character of traditional Spanish glove puppet theatre…
Although it is ancient, the art of puppetry only became of interest to critics in the 20th century. Of course, early on puppet shows attracted the attention of a few observers who wished to find out more about what was considered a mere instance of popular entertainment rather than theatre…
The Republic of Croatia (Croatian: Republika Hrvatska), with its capital in Zagreb, is at the crossroads of Central Europe, South East Europe…
The Republic of Cuba (Spanish: República de Cuba), an island country in the Caribbean, is a multi-ethnic nation. Its people (Spanish: Cubanos), cultures and customs have diverse origins…
Dominican puppet theatre company. Founded in 1980 and directed by Basilio Novoa, Cúcara Mácara was aimed at children. The company performs in schools and colleges and leads workshops about construction and performance of puppets…
Italian puppet family from Bologna. The dynasty started with Filippo (1806-1872) in 1831 when he first presented his witty farces with the character of Sandrone on the Piazza Maggiore in Bologna…
Dynasty of Mexican puppeteers whose work dates back to the 1930s and whose members are Lola Cueto (1897-1978), her daughter Mireya (1922-2013) and the son of the latter…
French company founded in 1979 by Christian Carrignon (born in Paris in 1948) and Katy Deville (born in Bad-Filbingen, Germany, in 1956). Théâtre de Cuisine’s first show – Opéra bouffe (Comic Opera) in 1981 – was inspired by the outdoor markets of Pau and successfully ran for twenty years…
Italian puppeteer from Palermo. From his earliest years Giacomo Cuticchio was attracted by the pupi theatre. He frequented the Greco brothers’ theatre and became the pupil of Achille Greco…
Italian puppeteer, puparo and cuntista. Son of Giacomo Cuticchio, a travelling puparo well known in artistic circles in Palermo…
The Republic of Cyprus (Greek: Κυπριακή Δημοκρατία; Turkish: Kıbrıs Cumhuriyeti), with its capital Nicosia, is an island nation in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea…
Located in Central Europe, the Czech Republic (Czech: Česká republika) is bordered by Germany to the west, Austria to the south…
Portuguese playwright, poet and lawyer. António José da Silva (also known as “the Jew”), was born into a family of “new Christians” (forced converts who continued to secretly practise Judaism) that had taken refuge in Brazil…
The puppeteer-narrator in wayang, the traditional theatre of Indonesia, the puppet art (dhalang, in Javanese).
A dalang is the head of his troupe who gives performances sponsored by patrons…
Canadian company based in the heart of Quebec since 1975. Théâtre de la Dame de Coeur is an important centre for research, creation, production, presentation…
If dance, operating as a codified technique different from everyday gestures (even when these gestures are transferred to the stage), is defined as an art which “remakes” a body into something other than the “actual body”…
Traditional rod puppet theatre from West Bengal in north-east India. In Bengal, the tradition of puppetry has been traced back to the end of the 14th century…
Arab doctor, poet and man of the theatre, author of the oldest shadow plays in Arabic. After the Mongols took over Baghdad in 1258, and at the beginning of the so-called “decadent epoch”…
Japanese musician and great master of his era for shamisen (three-stringed lute). Toyozawa Danpei played a major role in the revival of popularity of ningyō jōruri in the 1880-1890s…
British puppeteer (maker and performer), director, producer, puppet book dealer. The DaSilva Puppet Company was founded in 1962 by Ray and Joan DaSilva Palmer following several years of semi-professional activity in England and Canada…
Romanian director. Horia Davidescu is the founder of the puppet theatre of Craiova (see Teatrul pentru copii și tineret Colibri Colibri Theatre for Children and Youth)…
American puppeteer. The professional career of Paul Vincent Davis began in 1965 in Washington, DC. He worked with Carol Fijan doing Shakespeare with puppets. He moved to the Boston area in 1978 to become the Artistic Director of the Puppet Showplace Theatre…
A heroine of medieval legend whose story was told in the Legenda aurea or Legenda sanctorum (Golden Legend), a compilation of traditional lore about the lives of the saints by the Italian Jacobus de Voragine (c.1228/1230-1298)…
Spanish composer. The music of Manuel de Falla incorporates elements of popular Andalusian culture. One of his most famous works, El retablo de maese Pedro (Master Peter’s Puppet Show…
Peruvian puppeteer. Amedeo (born Manuel Feliciano) de la Torre, the fourth of eight children, studied at the Seminario de San Antonio de Cuzco and at the Colegio Nacional de Ciencias…
Figure theatre established in 1995 by Willem Verheyden at Mechelen in the Belgium province of Antwerp. The history of DE MAAN (The Moon) theatre is linked in this town with the Contryn lineage…
A stage-designer’s environment for various types of stage performers including puppets. The décor or stage setting is a theatrical image or sequence of images either constructed on a stage or in a natural space…
German marionettist and director. Georg Deininger gave up his job as a dentist in 1922 to devote himself to the marionette theatre he had founded two years earlier…
Spanish writer. Ramón María del Valle-Inclán’s disconcerting, fantastic and bitingly satirical work is well suited to puppets in many of its aspects. In the prologue to one of his esperpentos (a literary style in Spanish literature that uses cruelly distorted descriptions of reality in order to criticize society)…
French family of travelling performers and puppeteers. The history of the Delemarre family spans over two generations covering turbulent times that lasted from the July Monarchy to the Third Republic…
Russian actor and director, a member of the first generation of puppeteers who laid down the foundation for the professional puppet theatre in Russia. Many puppetry innovations are associated with his name: his 1920s-1930s productions based on the world classics (Anton Chekhov’s The Wedding…
Located in Central Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (former Zaire; French: République démocratique du Congo; also known as DR Congo…
The Kingdom of Denmark (Danish: Kongeriget Danmark), a country in Northern Europe, is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, located south-west of Sweden and south of Norway…
Indonesian university teaching Balinese arts including padalangan (puppetry; see Wayang) in Denpasar, Bali. This state institute of the arts was founded in l967…
Italian painter and sculptor. From the very start of his association with Futurism (1914), Fortunato Depero imagined the creation of “plastic complexes” endowed with both movement and sound…
French puppeteer and director. The son of a toy salesman who specialized in the sale of guignols, Robert Desarthis very early on showed a passion for puppetry…
American museum in Detroit, Michigan, with a significant puppet collection. In 1952, to honour the memory and contributions of Paul McPharlin, his family donated 274 puppets to the Detroit Institute of Arts (www.dia.org)…
German central institution for the nationwide promotion of all aspects concerning the art of the puppet, figure and object theatre. It was founded in 1992 by the city of Bochum and many associations and training institutions from all over Germany dedicated to puppetry arts (including the UNIMA Germany centre…
German puppetry institute. In 1950, the Deutsches Institut für Puppenspiel was created by the Deutschen Bund für Puppenspiel (German Federation for Puppetry) and the Berufsverband Deutscher Puppenspieler (Federation of Professional German Puppeteers/Professional Association of German Puppeteers) for the purpose of training…
Croatian creator of puppets, scenographer and costume designer. A graduate in architecture, Berislav Deželić devoted himself from early youth to scenography and costume design…
Argentine puppet and actors’ company. Diablomundo was founded in 1985 in Lomas de Zamora, a suburb of Buenos Aires. A number of artists, all very different in their skills and artistic backgrounds…
Malian farmer, hunter, and puppeteer, also known as Tiori Blé, “Tiori the Red”. A bright child, Tiory Diarra discovered the art of puppetry at the age of twelve and is a multi-talented artist: sculptor…
Polish puppet theatre stage director and managing director of a puppet company. In 1908, while finishing his studies in Philology in Munich, Marian Dienstl-Dąbrowa met the German Joseph Leonhard Schmid and became acquainted with Paul Brann‘s Marionettentheater Münchner Künstler (Marionette Theatre of Munich Artists)…
A visual effect created during videotaping or filming. Digital compositing, also called Chroma key compositing, consists of capturing and trimming the image of a puppet and placing it in another setting…
Turkish shadow theatre performer. A disciple of Hayali Camcı Irfan, Mazhar Baba, and Ragip Tugtekin, Tacettin Diker continued his career studying puppetry with Nurettin Sevin at the Ministry of Culture…
Romanian stage designer. A graduate of the Academia de Arte Plastice (Academy of Fine Arts) of Iași, Maria Dimitrescu worked at the Puppet Theatre of Brașov (see Teatrul pentru copii Arlechino) where she made her name creating images that were both pictorial and powerful…
Halfway between a glove puppet and object theatre, this type of puppet manipulation does not consist of any mechanical devices for gripping the puppet such as rods or strings…
Czech puppet theatre founded in 1963 in Plzeň (Pilsen). The Alfa Theatre took the name “Alfa” at the time of the merging of the Kabaret Alfa (Alfa Cabaret Ensemble) from Plzeň (Pilsen) and the Západočeské loutkové divadlo (Western Bohemian Puppet Theatre) from Karlovy Vary (founded in 1951)…
Czech puppet theatre founded by Jan Malík in Prague in 1949. This theatre was officially opened on February 26, 1950 with the premiere of Pan Johanes (Mr John)…