Get set, Chicago, to marvel at incredible stories told through the lens of contemporary puppetry, performed by amazing puppet artists and companies from around the world, during the 8th Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, January 21-February 1, 2026.
Tickets are on sale now at chicagopuppetfest.org. Don’t wait. Despite Chicago’s cold winters, tickets to the Chicago Puppet Festival are always the hottest ticket in town come January. Most shows sell out completely.
The 2026 festival will span 12 days and dozens of Chicago venues, presenting an international pageant of puppet artists sharing more than 100 puppetry activities. Get your tickets for all-ages spectacle shows in landmark theaters, intimate works on smaller stages, and the always popular, adults-only, late night puppet cabarets. And mark your calendar with a long list of free puppet events and shows happening all over the city throughout the festival.
Warm up to a wildly diverse range of classic and contemporary puppetry styles from around the world, created by puppet artists from England, France, Norway, Denmark, India, Scotland, South Korea and Spain, plus the U.S. and Chicago.
These stories and more await fans of the 8th Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, all told by puppet artists from around the world, showcasing different forms of traditional and contemporary puppet styles, from bunraku-style to shadow puppetry, marionettes to object-based works.
Highlights include:
Fan favorite Wakka Wakka, featuring artists from Norway and New York, opens this year’s festival with Dead as a Dodo, a mesmerizing musical odyssey about survival, transformation, and the power of true friendship. Infused with puppetry, humor, and stunningly innovative visual effects, Dead as a Dodo, commissioned by the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, takes audiences deep into the underworld, where two skeleton friends, a Dodo and a boy, may be shattering the established order of the dead.
Festival favorite Plexus Polaire (France/Norway) returns with A Doll’s House, a work that brings together puppets, actors, music and video projections for an eerie retelling of Henrik Ibsen's 1879 play, created by and starring artistic director Yngvild Aspeli.
England’s Blind Summit, break-out stars of the inaugural Chicago Puppet Festival with The Table, returns with The Sex Lives of Puppets, in which their beautiful puppets talk dirty to present a bawdy snapshot of puppet sex in modern-day Britain.
Chicago’s own shadow puppet masters, Manual Cinema, is back with The 4th Witch, a new and fantastic tale about a girl’s nightmarish quest for vengeance inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth, told through shadow puppetry, actors in silhouette and live music, without dialogue or narration. It’s like a film created in real time as you watch, this time in a new wide format.
Also from Chicago comes Rhynoceron by local puppeteer and Jeff Award-winning puppet designer KT Shivak, a gem of a piece with numerous stage elements that unfold in clever ways featuring a life-size, life-like rhino puppet that transforms in front of our eyes from a natural inspiring wonder to a hunted object of human greed.
France’s Théâtre de la Massue, makes its Chicago Puppet Festival debut with two shows by artistic director Ézéquiel Garcia-Romeu: The Little Theater at the End of the World, Opus II, a genre-busting work that reveals an extraordinary world of the infinitesimal, and La Méridienne, a unique blend of a high-end dinner at a private location with a five-minute puppet show performed for each patron in another room, one person at a time.
New York’s Alva Puppet Theatre presents The Harlem Doll Palace, based on the true story of Lenon Holder Hoyt, better known as Aunt Len, a beloved public school art teacher for 40 years who created a doll museum in her Harlem brownstone. Join the dolls from Aunt Len’s “dollection” as they recreate their journeys to their museum.
Family audiences will love Roald Dahl's The Enormous Crocodile by England’s Roald Dahl Story Company. In this mischievous musical, based on Dahl’s snappy book with toe-tapping tunes, the titular star weaves through the jungle with his tummy rumbling, while other jungle creatures foil his secret plans to stop this greedy brute. Audiences will go from the jungle into outer space and back again, just in time for a wild dance party!
The House, a puppet comedy thriller from Denmark’s Sofie Krog Theatre, is set in a family-owned funeral home, where hilarious horror, twists, turns and jumping souls haunt a revolving set featuring intricate lighting, strange contraptions and scary sound effects.
India’s Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust makes their Chicago debut with About Ram, an experimental theatrical piece using excerpts from the Bhavbhuti's “Ramayana,” an epic tale and guide for Hindu principles like dharma, told through animation, digitally projected dance, masks and puppets.
Audiences of all ages will delight in the magic of sequined Portland puppet raconteur Laura Heit’s The Matchbox Shows, teeny tiny puppet shows performed inside matchboxes, “the smallest, greatest, bravest, show in the world.”
From Seoul, South Korea comes Oil Pressure Vibrator created by and featuring Geumhyung Jeong, an artist who’s interested in the human body, the objects that surround it, with a particularly strange fascination with the excavator. Witness as Jeong plunges a big bucket into preconceptions about sexuality, technology and the body. For adult audiences only.
The Left Hand of Darkness, a New York/Chicago creative collaboration between Untitled Theater Co. No. 61 and Yara Arts Group, is based on the 1969 novel by famed sci-fi author Ursula K. Le Guin. Puppetry and co-direction are by Tom Lee, Co-Director of the Chicago Puppet Studio and Chicago Puppet Lab, in a show featuring a deep bench of Chicago puppet artists and actors.
2026 also marks the return of the always popular late-night puppet cabarets, Nasty, Brutish & Short, and the Free Neighborhood Tour, presenting two free, family-friendly puppet shows from Spain and the U.S. at venues and community spaces all over the city throughout the festival.
In addition to the incredible pageant of international and U.S. puppetry artists, The Puppet Hub is back and open throughout the festival on the fourth floor of the Fine Arts Building. It’s the perfect place to relax between shows, meet up with friends, make new ones, and learn more about contemporary puppetry. Attractions include The Spoke & Bird Pop-Up Cafe, serving coffee, tea, winter soups and baked treats, the Pop-Up Puppet Shop, and two free exhibits: Two Ways Down, featuring festival artist Laura Heit’s exquisite hand-drawn animation and film inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Heavenly Delights,” and a room full of giant lantern puppets created in the pre-festival workshop with Andrew Kim of Thingamugig.
Puppetry enthusiasts are also welcome to check out the free Ellen Van Volkenburg Symposium, the Catapult Artist Intensive, professional education workshops with visiting puppet artists, and more.
Now presented annually, the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival is the largest event of its kind in North America. Last year’s festival attracted a record audience – more than 22,000 fans of puppetry, ranging from Chicago residents to international guests who choose Chicago as their travel destination in the middle of January to enjoy world-class puppet productions from here and abroad.
The Warwick Allerton Hotel, 701 N. Michigan Ave. in downtown Chicago, is the Official Hotel of the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival. Use promo code Puppetfest2026 for discounted rates during festival dates. Visit warwickhotels.com/warwick-allerton-chicago or call (312) 440-1500 to reserve.
Visit chicagopuppetfest.org for tickets and information about the 8th Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, and sign up for the festival’s e-news. Follow the festival on Facebook, Instagram or Vimeo, hashtag #ChiPuppetFest.
Following are details about this year's performances (in chronological order), special events and exhibits, including venues, dates, times, ticket prices, estimated run time, and show descriptions:
Opening Night Prelude Reception
Fine Arts Building, 3rd Floor Balcony
410 S. Michigan Ave., downtown Chicago
Wednesday, January 21, 5:15 p.m. - 6:45 p.m.
Tickets: $125/$250 benefactor
Join top supporters, festival leadership, staff and artistic directors from this year’s international companies to toast the opening of the 8th edition of the festival. This exclusive, pre-show reception features drinks, hors d’oeuvres, early access to claim opening night seats and a sneak-peek at exhibitions before they open to the public, followed by the opening night performance of Wakka Wakka's Dead as a Dodo. Show tickets sold separately
Dead as a Dodo
Wakka Wakka (Norway/U.S.)
Studebaker Theater, Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave., downtown Chicago
January 21-25
Five shows: Wednesday, January 21 at 7 p.m.; Friday, January 23 at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, January 24 at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, January 25 at 2 p.m.
80 minutes
8 and up
Tickets: $40-$48
Back by popular demand, Dead as a Dodo raucously takes us deep within the underworld, where two skeleton friends, a Dodo and a boy, concerned about disappearing completely, notice something peculiar: the Dodo is miraculously sprouting feathers! A wave of transformation begins, shattering the established order of the dead. As the Dodo continues to grow flesh, fear and chaos erupt. The two friends must flee, fighting to stay together as they are drawn into the heart of an epic battle between life and death. Infused with puppetry, humor, and stunningly innovative visual effects, Dead as a Dodo is a mesmerizing musical odyssey about survival, transformation, and the power of true friendship.
Wakka Wakka is a critically acclaimed non-profit visual theater company founded by co-artistic directors Kirjan Waage and Gwendolyn Warnock. Dead as a Dodo is Wakka Wakka’s fifth major co-production with Nordland Visual Theater.
Since 2001, Wakka Wakka has created and produced 13 original works which have toured extensively throughout the US and abroad. With subject matter ranging from the financial crisis in Iceland (SAGA), to international consumerism and human rights (Made in China), to genetic manipulation and the survival of mankind far into the future (The Immortal Jellyfish Girl). The company has collaborated with the Oslo Philharmonic, Riksteatret, the Arctic Philharmonic, Animando Studios, and MiNensemblet among others. Wakka Wakka has been honored with an Obie Award, a Drama Desk Award, and two UNIMA Citations of Excellence. Additionally, the company’s work has won awards in China and Croatia and has been nominated for four Drama Desk Awards, a Helen Hayes Award and a Hewes Design Award.
Opening Night Post-Show Party
Fine Arts Building, Curtiss Hall, 10th Floor, 410 S. Michigan Ave., downtown Chicago
Wednesday, January 21, 8:30 p.m.-10:15 p.m.
Tickets: $125/$250 benefactor
Celebrate opening night with the artists who have come to Chicago to share their astonishing and delightful acts for the next 12 days of the festival. Enjoy drinks, dessert and puppetry of course! Support for this benefit event is provided by the Art Legacy Project.
The Harlem Doll Palace
Alva Puppet Theatre (New York City/U.S.)
Reva & David Logan Center for the Arts, Theater East, UChicago, 915 E. 60th St., Hyde Park
January 22-24
Five shows: Thursday, January 22 at 4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.; Friday, January 23 at 4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, January 24 at 6 p.m.
80 minutes
10 and up
Tickets: $35-$43
alvapuppettheater.com/theharlemdollpalace
Welcome to The Harlem Doll Palace, based on the true story of Lenon Holder Hoyt, better known as Aunt Len, a public school art teacher for 40 years who created a doll museum in her Harlem brownstone. Join the dolls from the “dollection” inside Aunt Len’s Doll and Toy Museum as they recreate their journeys to the museum and seek to keep its beloved founder alive while Harlem deteriorates around her.
Children inherently trust the world of imagination which connects humans to truth and happiness. Alva Puppet Theatre encourages adults to suspend their attachment to realism, too. Through the intersection of puppetry, material/object, performance, ritual and actor theater, Alva Puppet Theatre’s work reveals the wonderment and cultural impact of historical epochs and characters, while centering narratives around women and the repressed emotional truth of African-American women. The company is led by artistic director and multidisciplinary artist Alva Rogers, who also plays Aunt Len.
Rhynoceron
KT Shivak (Chicago/U.S.)
Chopin Theatre Mainstage, 1543 W. Division St., Wicker Park
January 22-25
Six shows: Thursday, January 22 at 7 p.m.; Friday, January 23 at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.; Saturday, June 24 at 11 a.m. and 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, January 25 at 3 p.m.
70 minutes
Tickets: $35-$43
A Chicago premiere, Rhynoceron traces the true events surrounding the arrival of a one-horned rhinoceros to Renaissance Europe, sparking an obsession that continued for hundreds of years. Through acts of hunting and collecting, KT Shivak’s life-size, life-like rhino puppet transforms in front of our eyes from a natural inspiring wonder to an object of human greed.
Shivak and company hail from Chicago where Rhynoceron was created with support from The Chicago International Puppet Theatre Festival. Rhynoceron premiered last May at New York’s Puppetopia 2025, where it gave NewYorkTheater a “whoa moment,” calling it “captivating,” “endlessly inventive,” with “cheeky invention.” Shivak’s realistic rhino puppet was also a star attraction in the recent Chicago Cultural Center exhibit, “Potential Energy: Chicago Puppets Up Close.”
The 4th Witch
Manual Cinema (Chicago/U.S.)
The Biograph’s Začek-McVay Mainstage, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave., Lincoln Park
January 22-25
Six shows: Thursday, January 22 at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, January 23 at 8:30 p.m.; Saturday, January 24 at 3 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.; Sunday, January 25 at 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.
65 minutes
12 and up
Tickets: $40-$48
manualcinema.com/work/the-4th-witch
A new and fantastic tale from Chicago’s Manual Cinema, inspired by elements of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in which a girl escapes war and flees into a dark forest. Told through shadow puppetry, actors in silhouette and live music, without dialogue or narration, The 4th Witch begins on the eve of an invasion of a small town by the local warlord, Macbeth. The girl flees into the nearby forest, where, orphaned and exiled, she is rescued by a witch, who adopts her as an apprentice. As the girl becomes more skilled in witchcraft, her grief and rage draw her into a nightmarish quest for vengeance against the warlord who killed her parents: Macbeth. The 4th Witch, an inversion of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, explores themes of grief, war, generational conflict, and cycles of violence through the collateral damage left behind on the battleground.
Manual Cinema is an Emmy Award-winning performance collective, design studio and film/video production company founded in 2010 by Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace, Ben Kauffman, Julia Miller and Kyle Vegter. Manual Cinema tours internationally, combining handmade shadow puppetry, cinematic techniques, and innovative sound and music to create immersive stories for stage and screen. Using vintage overhead projectors, multiple screens, puppets, actors, live feed cameras, multi-channel sound design, and a live music ensemble, Manual Cinema transforms the experience of attending the cinema and imbues it with liveness, ingenuity, and theatricality. The 4th Witch marks the company’s fifth appearance in the Chicago International Puppet Festival.
Nasty, Brutish & Short
Rough House Puppet Arts (Chicago/International)
Constellation, 3111 N. Western Ave., Roscoe Village/Avondale
Four shows: Friday and Saturday, January 23 and 24, and Friday and Saturday, January 30 at 31 at 10:30 p.m.
60 minutes
16 and up
Tickets: $15-$20
Hit the Puppet Fest’s fan-favorite late night shows, where raucous, raunchy, dark, sassy, sad and mostly hilarious puppet theater plays to supportive, sold out houses. The best part? Fancy international out-of-town puppet artists join cabaret host Jameson, his somewhat furry friends, and legendary Chicago puppeteers for a wild night of puppet revelry and fellowship followed by friendly unwinding. All four Nasty, Brutish & Short cabarets will also be streamed live. Check website for details.
Named “Best Late-Night Adult-Content Puppet Cabaret” by the Chicago Reader, Nasty, Brutish & Short is curated by Rough House Puppet Arts, a Chicago company on a mission to celebrate the weird things that make us unique, and the weirder things that bring us together. Funded in part by the Puppet Slam Network, this popular quarterly late-night cabaret doubles as an evening of contemporary short-form puppet and object-based theater for adult audiences, and a low-risk environment for artists to perform new and experimental work.
The Sex Lives of Puppets
Blind Summit Theatre (England)
The Biograph’s Začek-McVay Mainstage, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave., Lincoln Park
January 26-31
Eight shows: Monday through Wednesday, January 26-28 at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday, January 29 at 5 p.m.; Friday, January 30 at 5 p.m. and 8 p.m.; Sunday, January 31 at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m.
101 minutes (including intermission)
18 and up
Tickets: $40-$48
blindsummit.com/whats-on/the-sex-lives-of-puppets
The Sex Lives of Puppets pulls back the covers on puppet sex in contemporary Britain: filthy, funny, shocking and touching…lots of touching. This collaboration between Blind Summit’s puppets and the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles is not so much “birds and bees,” more “nuts and bolts.”
Co-writers/directors Ben Keaton (Perrier Award Winner, Father Ted) and Mark Down (Artistic Director, Blind Summit Theatre), took inspiration from real-life responses to lead an impish cast of improviser puppeteers, and a veritable smorgasbord of different puppets, to explore sex and humanity and expose the underbelly of puppet eroticism. The New York Times found it all “oddly adorable” while The Stage called the show “a refreshingly positive message about sharing intimacy, shedding inhibitions and finding your own joy.”
Blind Summit’s unforgettable The Table, starring a puppet made of cardboard and a table, was a smash hit at the inaugural Chicago Puppet Festival in 2015. The Chicago Tribune called it “a puppet show for those who hate such arty affairs, as it also manages to be precisely the opposite for those who love them.” The London based company is one of the world’s leading puppet based theater companies making puppetry at all scales, including giant puppets in the Olympic Opening Ceremony in London.
La Méridienne
Théâtre de la Massue (France)
A gourmet dinner plus puppet show, at a private location shared upon ticket purchase
January 22-28
14 shows: Thursday, January 22 through Wednesday, January 28, every day at 4 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Note: 9 p.m. shows may be added based on popular demand
60 minutes
16 and up
Tickets: $125; Purchase all 12 seats, get 10 percent off
ezequiel-garcia-romeu.com/en/la-meridienne/
A Puppet Fest first! Don’t miss this unique farm-to-table, family-style dinner for 12 people, paired with a five-minute puppet show performed for each guest, one at a time.
The experience begins as 12 guests take their seats at a private Wicker Park location, disclosed only upon ticket purchase, for a delicious, multi-course meal created by Chicago chef Chris Sullivan, owner of Twilight Kitchen, former executive chef of Ikram Cafe, with experience at some of Chicago’s finest restaurants including Blackbird and Avec. Then, one by one, each dinner guest is taken into another room during the meal to view a puppet show performed for them alone, before returning to the dinner table while the next person goes.
The puppet play La Méridienne tells the story of the fragility of human thought in front of the passage of time. The puppet showman, invisible and tucked away in his theater, shows his solo viewer the whole life of humanity – birth, life and its apprenticeships, then disappearance within the universe – as if it’s happening in a dream, in just five minutes.
Ézéquiel Garcia-Romeu, artistic director of the Théâtre de la Massue, is an inventor of universes, director and scenographer. He explores contemporary forms of puppetry and new forms of stage writing. His shows have been programmed at the Festival Mondial de Charleville- Mézières, the Théâtre National de Nice, Théâtre National de Chaillot, the Odéon, the Théâtre de la Commune, the Auditorium of the Musée d'Orsay, the Festival in d'Avignon, the Berliner Festspiele, and numerous festivals and stages around the world.
The Little Theater at the End of the World, Opus II
Théâtre de la Massue (France)
Chopin Theatre Mainstage, 1543 W. Division St., Wicker Park
January 28-February 1
Five shows: Wednesday, January 28 at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday, January 29 at 4 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, January 30 and January 31 at 7 p.m., Sunday, February 1 at 3 p.m.
60 minutes
13 and up
Tickets: $35-$43
ezequiel-garcia-romeu.com/en/le-petit-theatre-du-bout-du-monde-opus-ii/
An artist of the infinitesimal, Ézéquiel Garcia-Romeu is a demiurge who reveals an extraordinary world, in a precarious equilibrium between the beauty and brutality of matter. From the outset, Théâtre de la Massue breaks the mold and invites us to construct a live territory in interaction with its audience. On stage, a hazy, rugged landscape emerges, gradually populated by puppets with sculpted faces. Here and there, these little creatures are busy with strange and sometimes absurd tasks, meticulously participating in a clever little machine, immersed in an artisanal universe made of wood, salvaged objects and strings. As the performance unfolds, paths of hope emerge within this moving metaphor for the human condition.
Garcia-Romeu, artistic director of the Théâtre de la Massue, is an inventor of universes, director and scenographer. He explores contemporary forms of puppetry and new forms of stage writing. His shows have been programmed at the Festival Mondial de Charleville-Mézières, the Théâtre National de Nice, Théâtre National de Chaillot, the Odéon, the Théâtre de la Commune, the Auditorium of the Musée d'Orsay, the Festival in d'Avignon, the Berliner Festspiele, and numerous festivals and stages around the world.
A Doll’s House
Plexus Polaire (France/Norway)
MCA Chicago, 205 E. Pearson St., downtown Chicago
January 29-February 1
Four shows: Thursday, January 29 at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, January 30 at 6 p.m.; Saturday, January 31 at 6 p.m.; Sunday, February 1 at 3 p.m.
80 minutes
14 and up
Tickets: $40-$48
plexuspolaire.com/une-maison-de-poupe
Plunge into a world on the edge of the fantastic, where the heroine is a prisoner of her own web of lies, woven over many years. A Doll’s House brings together puppets, actors, music and video projections in this eerie retelling of Henrik Ibsen's 1879 play, one of the great Nordic classics. Created by and starring artistic director Yngvild Aspeli, the production features one female and one male actor-puppeteer in a house haunted by hyper-realistic, life-sized puppets, dead birds and a possessed female choir. Nora, the main character, experiences a collision with her own reality, akin to a bird hitting an invisible barrier. Throughout, the old house filled with ghosts that still affect us today is explored, creating not just a performance, but an invitation to explore your own life choices.
France’s internationally acclaimed Plexus Polaire returns for its fifth Chicago Puppet Festival, having already wowed audiences with spectacular, sold out performances of Dracula: Lucy’s Dream (2025), Moby Dick (2023), Chambre Noire (2019) and Cendres (2017). Now they’re back with large-scale spectacle, human size bunraku puppets, hypnotic video projection and their signature style of imbuing the puppet with storytelling power.
Roald Dahl's The Enormous Crocodile
Roald Dahl Story Company (England)
Studebaker Theater, Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave., downtown Chicago
January 29-February 1
Seven shows: Thursday, January 29 at 1 p.m.; Friday, January 30 at 10:30 a.m. and 6 p.m.; Saturday, January 31 at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.; Sunday, February 1 at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m.
(Note: Post-festival performances continue through February 21)
55 minutes
All ages
Tickets: $40-48, with discounted tickets available for school groups
The Enormous Crocodile is weaving his way through the jungle with his tummy rumbling. Only the other jungle creatures can foil his secret plans and clever tricks, but they’re going to have to find a large amount of courage to stop the greedy brute. From Trunky the Elephant to Muggle-Wump the Monkey, get to know the menagerie of creative puppets in the U.S. premiere tour of this smash U.K.-hit production. Audiences of all ages will go from the jungle into outer space and back again, just in time for a wild dance party!
This mischievous musical based on Roald Dahl’s snappy book has toe-tapping tunes by Ahmed Abdullahi Gallab, a book and lyrics by Suhayla El-Bushra, and additional music and lyrics by Tom Brady. Developed and directed by Emily Lim, it features a menagerie of puppets by co-director and puppetry designer Toby Olié, set and costume design by Fly Davis, puppetry co-designed and supervised by Daisy Beattie, casting by Annelie Powell, choreography by Vicki Igbokwe- Ozoagu, lighting by Jessica Hung Han Yun and sound by Tom Gibbons. Originally co-produced by Roald Dahl Story Company, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre and Leeds Playhouse.
The House
Sofie Krog Theatre (Denmark)
Steppenwolf’s Merle Reskin Space, 1624 N. Halsted St., Lincoln Park
January 29-February 1
Seven shows: Thursday, January 29 at 6 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.; Friday, January 30 at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.; Saturday, January 31 at 2 p.m. and 6 p.m.; Sunday, February 1 at 2 p.m.
55 minutes
13 and up
Tickets: $35-$43
The House is a puppet comedy thriller for teens and adults that tells the story of the Warehouse Family Funeral Home. On her deathbed, the undertaker changes her last will and testament, a secret begins to unravel and an evil plan is formed. Two puppeteers lead audiences behind closed doors and into rooms which hide unspeakably dark deeds. Their complex puppet performance takes place in a revolving set featuring intricate lighting, strange contraptions and scary sound effects – the perfect setting for a comic thriller filled with hilarious horror, twists and turns and jumping souls.
Sofie Krog Teater is one of the leading puppet theaters in Denmark, known for creating unique comical universes with magic set designs that open up and amaze the audience. The company was started in 2003 by puppeteer and puppet maker Sofie Krog and was expanded in 2009 with set designer and puppeteer David Faraco. The theater tours nationally and internationally and has won numerous awards for their performances.
About Ram
Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust (India)
Dance Center of Columbia College, 1306 S. Michigan Ave., downtown Chicago
January 29-31
Four shows: Thursday, January 29 at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, January 30 at 1 p.m. and 6 p.m.; Saturday, January 31 at 12 p.m.
60 minutes
5 and up
Tickets: $15-$35
About Ram is an experimental theatrical piece using excerpts from the Bhavbhuti's “Ramayana” told through animation, digitally projected dance, masks and puppets. Experience this ancient Indian story about Prince Ram, an incarnation of the god Vishnu, who is exiled and must fight the demon king Ravana to rescue his wife Sita. Follows Ram's life, his exile, Sita's abduction by Ravana, his alliance with the monkey general Hanuman, and his eventual return to rule, an epic tale that serves a guide for Hindu principles like dharma, exploring themes of good versus evil, ideal relationships and duty.
Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust, Anurupa Roy, managing trustee, started in India as an association of puppeteers in 1998. The name is an amalgam of two Hindi words: Kat, meaning wood, derived from the word Katputli (puppetry), and Katha, meaning story. About Ram was created with support from the India Foundation for the Arts and in collaboration with animator Vishal Dar and master puppeteer S.Chidambara Rao, from the Tolu Bommalattam form of Andhra Pradesh.
Oil Pressure Vibrator
Geumhyung Jeong (South Korea)
MCA Chicago, 205 E. Pearson St., downtown Chicago
January 30-31
Two shows: Friday and Saturday, January 30 and January 31 at 9 p.m.
60 minutes
18 and up
Tickets: $40-$48
Geumhyung Jeong is a South Korean artist who’s interested in the human body, the objects that surround it, and the blurred boundaries between who controls who, what controls which. She’s developed a particularly strange fascination with the excavator and its movement.
In Oil Pressure Vibrator, she wields that heavy machinery to break into the complexities of sexuality. Her quest is narrated live (with English subtitles), interwoven with performance, documentary film and genre-defying video work. For all its wildness, it’s also a contemplative, starkly beautiful show…an intrepid performance-lecture that plunges a big bucket into preconceptions about sexuality, technology and the body, then digs past them, towards a place of earth-moving self-pleasure.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Untitled Theater Company No. 61 & Yara Arts Group (New York/Chicago/U.S.)
New Works Project
Northwestern University’s Wirtz Center Chicago Abbott Hall, 710 N. Lake Shore Dr.
January 29-February 1
4 shows: Thursday, January 29 at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, January 30 at 4 p.m.; Saturday, January 31 at 4 p.m.; Sunday, February 1 at 1 p.m.
2 hours, with a 15 minute intermission
Tickets: $43-35
The Left Hand of Darkness is a new work based on the 1969 novel by famed sci-fi author Ursula K. Le Guin, wherein a lone human emissary to an alien world tries to facilitate inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. To do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the newly encountered, completely dissimilar culture whose inhabitants spend most of their time without a gender.
New York’s Untitled Theatre Company #61 is celebrating 30 years of mixing tragedy and comedy in a manner inspired by classic absurdism, while incorporating music, puppetry, technology and physical theater. Yara Arts Group, also in New York, creates visually stunning theater pieces that explore contemporary and traditional cultures of the East.
Puppetry and co-direction are by Tom Lee, Co-Director of the Chicago Puppet Studio and Chicago Puppet Lab, both divisions of the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival. The production team also includes Chicago puppet artists Grace Needlman, Jacky Kelsey, Averly Sheltraw, Chih-jou Cheng and Chicago actors Winter Jones and Miguel Long.
The Matchbox Shows
Laura Heit (Portland/U.S.)
Constellation, 3111 N. Western Ave., Roscoe Village/Avondale
January 22-25
Seven shows: Thursday, Friday and Saturday, January 22- 24 at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.; Sunday, January 25 at 8 p.m.
50 minutes
13 and up
Tickets: $25-33
lauraheit.com/the-matchbox-shows
Miniature raconteur and sequined pyromaniac Laura Heit performs teeny tiny puppet shows inside matchboxes. “The smallest, greatest, bravest, show in the world!” Audiences of all ages will delight in the magic and folly of Heit’s miniature circus. There’s Ruby the strong lady. Donna the magician and her magic banana. Bill the Un-Scary Pirate and his seven flying chairs. A fire breathing dragon. And a Brave bunny who is shot out of a cannon, all no bigger than a matchstick. The entire show is projected simultaneously on a screen behind the table making the teeny tiny details of this portable variety show larger than life.
Laura Heit is a puppet artist, animator, performer and experimental filmmaker whose work has been exhibited and screened in myriad U.S. cities and abroad. She earned her Master of Fine Arts from the Royal College of Art in London and her Bachelor of Fine Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). She lives and works in Portland, Oregon.
Free Neighborhood Tour
January 21-February 1
All ages
Free
The Puppet Festival’s annual Free Neighborhood Tour brings free, family-friendly performances to locations outside of Chicago’s theaters to foster an appreciation for puppetry throughout the city. The tour offers a range of high-quality puppetry styles to create moments of community enjoyment while expanding the city’s base of puppet enthusiasts. The Tour once again presents two free, family-friendly puppet shows, this year from Spain and Baltimore, to venues and community spaces all over the city. Stay tuned for dates, times and locations.
Happy Birthday, Mon Ami
Alex & Olmsted (Baltimore/U.S.)
60 minutes
Class, cultures, and expectations clash when Jacques’ American cousin Sam visits him in Paris for a birthday celebration. Winner of a 2024 Jim Henson Foundation grant award, Happy Birthday, Mon Ami combines glove puppetry, live music, and audience participation to create a delightful hour of fun for the whole family. Broadwayworld called it “tiny, enchanting and exquisite.”
Alex & Olmsted (Alex Vernon and Sarah Olmsted Thomas) is an internationally acclaimed puppet theater and filmmaking company based in Maryland. They have toured at festivals in Italy, Denmark, South Korea, and Canada, and have performed at numerous venues within the United States, including the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival.
Stone by Stone
Tian Gombau (Spain)
30 minutes
Spanish puppet artist Tian Gombau was walking barefoot on the beach one day when he suddenly realized there are so many stones on earth. He started to classify them and keep them as precious treasures, thinking, if you look at what’s inside them, one realizes there is something more than just a stone. The result is an ingenious, endearing, 30-minute imagination-awakening experience for children using only inanimate objects.
Gombau founded his own company Tian Gombau-Teatre de l'Home Dibuixat in 1992. He has produced more than 10 shows, performed in more than 40 countries, four continents and 10 different languages. Stone by Stone has been performed more than 1,900 times around the world, received 17 national and international awards, and a nomination in the MAX AWARDS (Spain) as Best Theater Show for Children and Family Audiences.
Stop Motion Short Films
Presented in partnership with the Manipulate Festival (Scotland)
Program A: Best of Scotland
Program B: International, Best of Manipulate Festival’s 19 years
In a cross continental cultural collaboration, the Chicago Puppet Festival has partnered with Edinburgh’s annual Manipulate Festival to present an amazing mini-Film Fest within the Puppet Fest introducing the very best of international and Scottish work in animated film, puppetry and visual theater. Details about the two different programs on offer will be released shortly.
Closing Party
The Rhapsody Theater, 1328 W. Morse Ave., Rogers Park
Sunday, February 1, 6:30 p.m.
18 and up
Tickets: $35-$2,000
Festival favorite Joshua Holden and his right-hand man, the charmingly misanthropic Mr. Nicholas, co-emcee this final must-see evening of wildly unforgettable puppetry featuring Cowboy Outlaw performed by Artistic Director and Festival Founder Blair Thomas, Silas Thomas, What to Do in a Puppet Emergency by Blind Summit’s Mark Down, and more.
The Spoke & Bird Pop-Up Cafe returns to the Puppet Hub on the fourth floor of the Fine Arts Building, serving coffee, tea, winter soups and baked treats.
The Puppet Hub
Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Avenue, fourth floor
January 21-February 1
Check website for hours
Visit The Spoke & Bird Pop-Up Cafe, the Pop-Up Puppet Shop, and two free exhibits: Two Ways Down, featuring festival artist Laura Heit’s hand-drawn animation and film inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Heavenly Delights,” and a room full of giant lantern puppets created in the pre-festival workshop with Andrew Kim of Thingamugig.
Workshops
Giant Puppet Workshop
Chicago Puppet Studio, Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave., Rm 433
January 11-21, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily, day off Friday, January 16
$650
Sold out! Email info@chicagopuppetfest.org to be added to the waitlist.
Before the festival even begins, join South Korean Master Puppet Builder Andrew Kim of England’s Thingumajig Theatre for Giant Puppet Workshop (Level 1). In this two-week pre-festival intensive, participants will design and construct large-scale lantern animal puppets that will make appearances at special events and be showcased in a free exhibit inside The Puppet Hub throughout the festival.
Sign ups for more workshops – more than any prior festival – to be announced soon.
Exhibitions
Two Ways Down by Laura Heit
Chicago Puppet Studio, Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave., Rm 433
This showcase of visiting festival artist Laura Heit’s exquisite hand-drawn animation and film Two Ways Down takes inspiration from Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Heavenly Delights.” Reflecting on the momentary nature of life, marvel how Heit’s fantastical piece uses thrown shadows from tabletop dioramas and reflected and refracted animated projections to create a fleeting world.
Giant Puppet Lanterns
Chicago Puppet Studio, Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave., Rm 433
Look for a room full of giant lantern puppets created in the pre-festival workshop with Andrew Kim of Thingamugig.
Catapult Artist Intensive
Immerse yourself in this year’s festival how founder and artistic director Blair Thomas says “I’d like to attend a festival.” The Catapult Artist Intensive returns with two professional development weekends designed to advance the form and expand understanding of the field of puppetry in the United States. Each weekend, practicing artists of all disciplines are taken on a three-day, curated, guided experience of festival programming including at least eight performances, symposium events, some meals, and local transportation.
Join an intimate cohort escorted by Chicago puppet artists Samuel J Lewis II (January 23-25) and Erica Mott (January 30-February 1) for discussions, backstage access to the shows and more. Registration is $625 per weekend including some meals. Hotel not included, but hotel discount is available. Limited capacity. Scholarships available. Go to chicagopuppetfest.org/catapult to sign up.
Ellen Van Volkenburg Puppetry Symposium
Four panel discussions presented by the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival
Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave., Little Studio, 7th Floor
January 24 and 25 at 10 a.m.
January 31 and February 1 at 10 a.m.
Free
In person and streaming via HowlRound
Named in honor of Little Theatre of Chicago director Ellen Van Volkenburg, who coined the term “puppeteer” in 1912, the festival’s annual symposium brings together puppetry enthusiasts, scholars and festival artists from Chicago, the U.S. and internationally for free discussions around the intersection of puppetry with other disciplines and ideas. Symposium schedule and speakers coming soon.
Book Talks
This year’s free Book Talks series presents three moderated discussions with leading national puppet scholars, discussing books and topics including race, gender and disability in puppetry:
Monday, January 26, 5 p.m.
“Making Meaning in Puppetry, Materials, Practice, Perception”
Edited By Dassia N. Posner, Claudia Orenstein, Alissa Mello
Moderator Paulette Richards interviews Dassia Posner and Claudia Orenstein
Tuesday, January 27, 5 p.m.
“Race, Gender, and Disability in Puppetry and Material Performance”
Edited By Paulette Richards, Hazel Briar, Alissa Mello, Laura Purcell-Gates/Associate Editor Katherine Kipkiss
Moderator Claudia Orenstein interviews Paulette Richards
Wednesday, January 28, 5 p.m.
“A Practical Guide to Puppetry”
By Mark Down of Blind Summit
Moderator Ana Díaz Barriga interviews Author Mark Down
Festival funders
Supporters of the 8th Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival include the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, Art Legacy Institute, Cheryl Lynn Bruce and Kerry James Marshall, The Chicago Community Trust, Chicago Park District Night Out in the Parks Program, City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Ferdi Foundation/Julie Moller, Illinois Arts Council, Jentes Family Foundation/ Justine Jentes and Dan Kuruna, Paul Levy and Mia Park, The Reva & David Logan Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Manaaki Foundation, Marshall Frankel Foundation, Kristy and Brandon Moran, Pritzker Foundation, and Deb and Andy Wolkstein.
About the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festiva
Originally founded in 2015 as a project of Blair Thomas & Co., the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival has highlighted artists from nations including Belgium, Chile, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Mexico, Norway, Puerto Rico, Poland, Scotland and South Africa as well as from Chicago and across the U.S. with the goal of promoting peace, equality, and justice on a global scale.
Already, the Chicago Puppet Festival is the largest of its kind in North America. Last year’s 2025 festival attracted a record 22,000+ audience members to 29 different Chicago venues large and small to enjoy an entertaining and eclectic array of puppet styles from around the world.
In 2022, the Festival moved from a biennial to an annual event, and tripled its footprint in Chicago’s historic Fine Arts Building. It opened an expanded office suite, debuted the Chicago Puppet Studio, which designs and fabricates puppets for theaters and events around the U.S., and launched the Chicago Puppet Lab, an education space and developmental residency designed to incubate more works of boundary-breaking puppetry in Chicago, expand equity in the field of puppetry, and encourage interdisciplinary experimentation in puppet theater.
It’s fitting that the Fine Arts Building is home again to one of the most influential puppetry organizations in the world. In 1912, after Ellen Van Volkenburg founded the Little Theater of Chicago in the Fine Arts Building, she needed a name for the actors manipulating marionettes in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. So she credited them in the program with a new word, “puppeteer.” Many agree this marked the initial intersection of traditional puppetry with contemporary theater still practiced today, and now flourishing around the world.
Expanded operations are overseen by Artistic Director and Festival Founder Blair Thomas and Executive Director Sandy Smith Gerding, with Cameron Heinze and La Mar Brown, Business Managers; Taylor Bibat, Festival Coordinator and Director of Education; Deirdre Huckabay, Grants & Giving Manager; Jess Mott Wickstrom, Web + Visual Communication Designer; Margaret Nelson and Frank Rose, Festival Production Managers; Zachary Sun, Studio Coordinator; Tom Lee, Co-Director, Chicago Puppet Lab and Studio; Grace Needlman, Co-Director Chicago Puppet Lab; and Caitlin McLeod, Chicago Puppet Studio Project Manager.
For more information, visit chicagopuppetfest.org.