Displaying items by tag: 9th Annual

 The puppets are coming!

The Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, the largest of its kind in North America, has announced the line-up for its 9th edition, January 20-31, 2027.

As before, the Festival will run 12 consecutive days, with shows and events popping up at dozens of venues large and small all across Chicago. Back bigger than ever, Festival goers can look forward to a huge array of puppet shows and experiences in 2027, including:

Fresh off his performance at United Center, Canadian sensation Kid Koala brings his multimedia magic to open the Festival with The Storyville Mosquito. While he’s in town, Kid Koala invites the entire family to show off their best robot dance moves at his all-ages morning Robot Dance Party, one show only!

It’s the Festival’s most sensational, inspirational, celebrational, Muppetational show yet -  the Chicago premiere of Puppet Up! Co-created by Brian Henson (Muppet Christmas Carol, Muppet Treasure Island), Puppet Up! blends unhinged feats of improv comedy, the unparalleled skill of Henson puppeteers, and recreations of classic Henson pieces. This is big. Like, really big.
Climb in the back of an ambulance and go on a wild, 25-minute race against time through the streets of Chicago with On Call from Canada’s Théâtre à Bout Portant. This intense show is staged entirely inside a moving ambulance for just three spectators at a time, ten departures per day.

Be the first to see The Daemon, a brand new, world premiere, genre-busting multimedia work exploring the fight to be human in a digital age from Chicago’s own Manual Cinema. Local puppeteer Myra Su will also debut Stripes, a new work featuring tabletop puppets built around barcode readers and light sensors. Both works are commissioned in part by the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival.

Take in three jaw-dropping works of puppet theater from Compagnie Tchaïka (Belgium/Chile), including Sisypholia, a free show featuring a modern-day Sisyphus rolling a giant ball of fast fashion through public spaces in Chicago. 

See two incredible shows from Japan, three acclaimed productions from France, one work from Spain and another from Catalonia, along with two stop-motion film festivals from Scotland.  Plus, from India comes a one-hour version and a seven-day ritual installation experience of The Ramayana featuring highly-skilled shadow puppet artists and live musicians.

Enjoy a gourmet dinner for 12 by acclaimed Chicago chef Christopher Sullivan, then step away for ConCordis, a short, private show for one featuring Brazilian puppet artist Nina Vogel, all staged at a private location in Wicker Park.

2027 also marks the return of the always popular late-night puppet cabarets, Nasty, Brutish & Short. Throughout the festival, the Free Neighborhood Tour will bring Out With It, a family-friendly show from Chicago’s Rough House Puppet Arts, to venues and community spaces all over the city.
 
Puppetry enthusiasts are also welcome to check out the free Ellen Van Volkenburg Symposium, and the Catapult Artist Intensive, professional education workshops with visiting puppet artists.

And so much more. In sum, this year’s festival will present more than 100 shows and events throughout the city, introducing audiences to a diverse range of classic and contemporary puppetry styles performed by puppet artists from Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Catalonia, Chile, France, India, Japan, Scotland, South Korea, Spain, Chicago and New York.

Be gone, bad weather. Voted Best Performing Arts Festival by the readers of the Chicago Reader, the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival is Chicago’s favorite winter staycation and a magnet for international visitors, welcoming  25,000+ audience members. The Chicago Puppet Fest is a great way to warm up your January with a wide range of fascinating shows, from tiny stages to huge theaters, adults only to family friendly, shadow puppetry to bunraku-style, spectacle events to intimate, miniature works 

Tickets to the 9th Chicago Puppet Festival go on sale in mid-November. Don’t wait. Despite Chicago’s cold winters, Puppet Festival tickets are the hottest seats in town come January. Sign-up for e-updates, request the 2027 festival brochure, learn more about the artists, plan your festival show schedule, recruit your friends, and purchase tickets at chicagopuppetfest.org.

Following is the preliminary line-up for the 9th Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival (shows are listed in chronological order, by start date/time.) Stay tuned for further special event and ticketing information including showtimes and prices:

The Storyville Mosquito
Kid Koala (Canada)
January 20-24
Studebaker Theater, Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave., downtown Chicago
Ages 6 and up

A young mosquito leaves his small town in the country to seek fame and fortune in the big city and fulfill his dream of playing in one of the greatest bands of all time, in this multimedia experience featuring miniature sets, live puppetry, cinematography, and live music by Kid Koala, fresh off his recent performance at United Center.

On Call
Théâtre à Bout Portant (Canada)
January 20-31 (no performances Monday, January 25)
Ten departures per day
Ages 18 and up

Staged entirely inside a moving ambulance, On Call is an intensely powerful, one-of-a-kind theatrical experience staged for just three brave spectators at a time. Climb inside and witness the fragility of human life and the fears of EMTs everywhere in this 25-minute trip through time on the streets of Chicago.
 

ConCordis
Nina Vogel (Brazil) with Chef Christopher Sullivan of Twilight Kitchen (Chicago)
A gourmet dinner plus one-on-one puppet show, held at a private location in Wicker Park
Thursday through Sunday, January 21-24 and January 28-31

Three seatings per night: 4 p.m., 6:30 p.m. and 9 p.m.
16 and up

Take a seat at this unique farm-to-table, family-style gourmet dinner for 12, paired with a short, intimate puppet show – performed for just one viewer at a time – that reveals what truly makes one’s heart beat. 

LOCO
Compagnie Tchaïka (Belgium/Chile)
At the Biograph Theatre’s Začek-McVay Mainstage, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave., Lincoln Park
January 21-23
Ages 12 and up

Inspired by Nikolai Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman,” LOCO is an absurdist tale exploring the blurred boundary between sanity and madness in a wildly surrealist ballet that leaves audiences spellbound.

An Ocean of Love
Compagnie La Salamandre (France)
Presented at Steppenwolf Theatre’s Merle Reskin Space, 1624 N. Halsted St., Lincoln Park
January 21-31
Ages 7 and up

Two employees in grey smocks make paper boats to escape their work, which turns into a charmingly funny and poetic, puppet-like odyssey across a stormy ocean, all immersed in a delicate world of paper. Inspired by the graphic novel of the same name.

Spa & Beauty

Geumhyung Jeong (South Korea)

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Crown Room, 220 E. Chicago Ave., downtown Chicago
January 21-24

Ages 18 and up

This provocative exhibition turns into a hands-on demonstration by the artist guiding small groups through tutorials using beauty and body care products that touch our naked body on a daily basis. Brushes, sponges, soaps and other functional objects form a disconcerting display that invites onlookers to reconsider their ideas of beauty, intimacy, self-care and consumption. 

Stripes
Myra Su (Chicago)
Chopin Theatre Mainstage, 1543 W. Division St., Wicker Park
January 21-24
All Ages

From the Walder Foundation’s Platform award-winning artist Myra Su comes a new work commissioned in part by the Festival. Newly innovated puppets built around barcode readers and light sensors navigate, process, and understand their environment, creating an immersive world and story where the sensorial experience of puppets bridge tech and life through music and light.

The Y - feel like flying
Yldor Llach (Catalonia)
CircEsteem, 4730 N. Sheridan Rd., in Uptown
January 21-31
All ages

A nimble tamer becomes increasingly intent on training his beast - a bicycle - to fly him to the moon in this singularly unique, multidisciplinary street circus featuring puppets, magic, theatre, poetry, acrobatics and a lot of audience participation. Not to be missed.

Yoroboshi

Satoko Ichihara (Japan)
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Edlis Neeson Theater, 220 E. Chicago Ave., Downtown
January 21-24

Ages 18 and up

*Subject matter may venture into adult themes or subject matter. Parental discretion is advised.

One of Japan’s most uncompromising playwright-directors makes her American debut with this utterly unpredictable feminist refashioning of this centuries-old Japanese fable about an abandoned, grossly mistreated blind boy abandoned by his parents: a traffic-autonomaton father and a sex doll mother. 

Sisypholia

Compagnie Tchaïka (Belgium/Chile)
MCA Plaza and other locations TBA
January 22-24

Free, open to the public
All ages

An everyday Sisyphus rolls a giant ball of fast fashion through public spaces in Chicago until he returns to his starting point. And just like the legendary Sisyphus, he is deep in his absurd reality, igniting an ironic engine of chaos that promises to extract audiences and passersby from the compulsive rhythm of today’s consumer culture.

Tholpavakoothu Ramayana Ritual Installation Experience

Harisree Kannan Tholpavakoothu Kalakendram (India)

Location TBA

January 22-28

All ages

Traditionally performed as marathon rituals in India’s Bhadrakali temples that last as many as 64 nights, this company tells the story of The Ramayana while showcasing Tholpavakoothu shadow puppetry. This installation is a more open-ended meditation and appreciation opportunity to come briefly or visit for all seven days to immerse yourself. Each ticket has a timed entry for a given day but once inside you can be there as long as you’d like that night. In sum, the installation features over 150 puppets, live music, performers capable of reciting as many as 2,100 slokas, and Tamil, Sanskrit and Malayalam language.

The Ramayana Leather Shadow Puppet Show of Kerala
Harisree Kannan Tholpavakoothu Kalakendram (India)

Location TBA

January 22-28
All ages

Join these fourteenth-generation puppeteers from the Kerala region in India as they employ traditional leather shadow puppets to share a one-hour performance of a section from The Ramayana.

Nasty, Brutish & Short
Rough House Puppet Arts (Chicago/International)
Constellation, 3111 N. Western Ave., Roscoe Village/Avondale
Friday and Saturday, January 22 and 23 and January 29 at 30 at 10:30 p.m.
16 and up

Eyebrows meet lowbrows at Rough House’s adults-only late show where fancy international out-of-town puppet artists join fan favorite Noah Ginex and emcee Jameson with legendary Chicago puppeteers for a wild night of fellowship and experimental puppet revelry.

Robot Dance Party
Kid Koala (Canada)
Sunday, January 24, 11 a.m.
At CircEsteem, 4730 N. Sheridan Rd., in Uptown
All ages

Music. Robots. Bleeps and blorps—it’s a morning robot dance party for adults and for kids! Participants build custom, one-of-a-kind robot costumes from scratch using provided cardboard and craft materials, then hit the dance floor to show off their robot moves while Kid Koala spins his favorite tracks.

Une Traversée
Compagnie Tchaïka (Belgium/Chile)
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Edlis Neeson Theater, 220 E. Chicago Ave., Downtown
January 26-28

Ages 10 and up

Inspired by Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking-Glass,” aided by puppets and the misappropriation of objects, Une Traversée explores how consciousness and imagination activate to face a world torn apart by war, as seen by the eyes of a child undertaking a very important crossing.  

Along the Tokaido Highway (working title)
Hachioji Kuruma Ningyo: The Koryū Nishikawa Troupe (Japan)
Lookingglass Theatre, 163 E. Pearson St., downtown Chicago
January 28-31
All ages

Japan’s national treasure and fifth-generation master puppeteer Koryū Nishikawa V brings this beautiful production blending traditional kuruma ningyō puppetry with contemporary staging to tell a classic story about the Tokaido Highway, the most important historical highway in Japan.

If It Were a Movie
Macarena Recuerda Shepherd (Spain)
The Dance Center Columbia College Chicago, 1306 S. Michigan Ave., South Loop
January 28-30
Ages 14 and up

In this remarkable reconfiguring of puppetry as Foley artistry, audience members wearing high-tech earphones watch and listen as an impossible film is created in their own minds. Sound in cinema is entirely rethought in the theatrical scene. Sounds that dramatize, fictionalize or re-signify the images they touch, producing strangeness, humor, and becoming a metaphor for traveling from the plausible to the unreal.

Little Theater at the World’s Edge - Opus II
Théâtre de la Massue (France)
Chopin Theatre Mainstage, 1543 W. Division St., Wicker Park

January 28-31
Ages 13 and up

The audience surrounds the stage, a hazy, rugged landscape emerges, gradually populated by puppets with sculpted faces, each meticulously participating in a clever little machine made of wood, salvaged objects and strings to create a moving metaphor for the human condition.

The Daemon
Manual Cinema (Chicago)
Reva & David Logan Center for the Arts, Performance Hall, UChicago, 915 E. 60th St., Hyde Park
January 28-31
Ages 12 and up

In a genre-bending new production, Manual Cinema presents a triptych of stories about technology, language, history, and human connection. Told entirely without dialogue, and using Manual Cinema’s beguiling pastiche of shadow puppetry, live feed video, and original music, this darkly comic production explores the fight to be human in a digital age.

Puppet Up!

Brian Henson (New York)
Studebaker Theater, Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave., downtown Chicago
January 29-31
16 and up
*Subject matter may venture into adult themes or subject matter. Parental discretion is advised.

Our most sensational, inspirational, celebrational, Muppetational show yet! Co-created by Brian Henson (Muppet Christmas Carol, Muppet Treasure Island), Puppet Up! blends unhinged feats of improv comedy, the unparalleled skill of Henson puppeteers, and recreations of classic pieces originally created by Jim and Jane Henson that haven’t been seen in decades.

 
Free Neighborhood Tour
Out With It by Rough House Puppet Arts, featuring Claire Saxe
Dates and locations TBA
All ages
Free

Chicago puppeteer Claire Saxe will pop up in different Chicago neighborhoods throughout the Festival to present free performances of Rough House’s new, family-friendly work Out With It, a playful collision of puppetry, clown, and the forces of chaos.

Film Screening – Project Hail Mary
With special guest James Ortiz (New York)
Film Row Cinema at Columbia College, 1104 S. Wabash, South Loop
Monday, January 25
Two screenings: 4 p.m. (followed by a talkback) and 7:30 p.m.
Ages 13 and up

Enjoy an exclusive screening of the acclaimed 2026 sci fi epic Project Hail Mary with special guest James Ortiz, who voiced and co-puppeteered the film’s character, Rocky, giving star Ryan Gosling a run for his money as the film’s most lovable character.

Film Screening – Manipulate Festival Program A: The Best of Scottish Stop Motion Short Films (Scotland)
Film Row Cinema at Columbia College, 1104 S. Wabash, South Loop
Presented in partnership with Columbia College Chicago School of Film and Television
Tuesday and Wednesday, January 26 and 27 at 5 p.m.
Ages 16 and up

From award-winning filmmakers to emerging talents, this “best of” line-up demonstrates why Scotland is a vibrant force in animated storytelling, showcasing an extraordinary diversity of stop‑motion techniques, spanning sand and stones, felt and clay, puppets, objects, machines and more.

Film Screening – Manipulate Festival Program B: Best of International Stop Motion Short Films
Film Row Cinema at Columbia College, 1104 S. Wabash, South Loop
Presented in partnership with Columbia College Chicago School of Film and Television
Tuesday and Wednesday, January 26 and 27 at 7 p.m.
Ages 16 and up

This international lineup celebrates the extraordinary diversity of stop‑motion technique with films from ten countries across four continents, each offering a distinct cultural and material approach to tell intimate, beautifully crafted tales of love, loss, memory and belonging. 

Film Screening - Dear Stranger (Japan, Taiwan, U.S.)
Film Row Cinema at Columbia College, 1104 S. Wabash, South Loop
Date TBA

A Japanese man and Taiwanese-American wife's immigrant lives unravel when their son disappears while she works as a theater puppet director. The kidnapping reveals hidden secrets, testing their emotional limits and moral boundaries. Featuring puppet direction by Blair Thomas, creations by the Chicago Puppet Studio and performances by celebrated actors Gwei Lun-Mei and Hidetoshi Nishijima.

Opening Night Prelude Reception
Fine Arts Building, 3rd Floor Balcony, 410 S. Michigan Ave., downtown Chicago
Wednesday, January 20, 5:15 p.m. - 6:45 p.m.

Join top supporters, festival leadership, staff and the Artistic Directors from the shows being presented this year in the Festival for drinks and hors d’oeuvres to toast the opening of the 9th edition of the Chicago Puppet Festival. Sponsored in honor of Board Member, Jordan Shields.

Opening Night Post-Show Party
Fine Arts Building, Curtiss Hall, 10th Floor, 410 S. Michigan Ave., downtown Chicago
Wednesday, January 20, 8:30 to 10:15 p.m.

Celebrate Opening Night with international puppet 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! 

Closing Party
Location TBA

The Closing Night Party is always the hottest ticket in town. Details coming soon.

The Catapult Artist Intensive
January 22-24, January 25-27 and January 29-3

Ages 18 and up
Cost: $635 (No application required. Hotel not included, but a hotel discount is available at the Warwick Allerton Hotel, 701 N. Michigan Ave. in downtown Chicago.)

The Catapult Artist Intensive returns bigger than before, with not two but three unique professional multi-day sessions to inspire and inform practicing artists of all disciplines. Over each three-day period, participants take a deep dive into puppetry with a curated, guided experience of the Festival programming. Join an intimate cohort, escorted by a professional leader, for discussions, backstage access and more. Deemed the best way to experience the Festival deeply (per AD Blair Thomas).

New this year: the Festival introduces the Mid-Week Workshop Intensive, which offers three full days of workshops with Festival artists. In the evenings, the Mid-Week cohort will attend Festival programming. 

The Ellen Van Volkenburg Puppetry Symposium
Four free panel discussions presented by the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 E. Chicago Ave., Downtown

Saturday and Sunday, January 23 and 24, and January 30 and 31, 10 a.m. and Noon
Stay tuned for topics and speakers

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.

Get your tickets, and enjoy a discount at The Warwick Allerton Hotel, the Official Hotel of the Chicago Puppet Festival

Visit chicagopuppetfest.org for tickets and information about the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival. Follow the fest on Facebook, Instagram or Vimeo, hashtag #ChiPuppetFest.

The Warwick Allerton Hotel, 701 N. Michigan Ave. in Chicago, is the Official Hotel of the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival. Use discount code PUPPETFEST2027 during festival dates. Visit warwickhotels.com/warwick-allerton-chicago or call (312) 440-1500 to reserve.

Festival Funders

Supporters of the 9th Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival include the Paul Angell Foundation, Cheryl Lynn Bruce and Kerry James Marshall, Chicago Park District Night Out in the Parks Program, City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Ginger Farley, Ferdi Foundation, Julie Moller, The Marshall Frankel Foundation, Elizabeth Frankel, Illinois Arts Council, Jentes Family Foundation, Justine Jentes and Dan Kuruna, the Paul A. Levy Trust, Mia Park and Ali Levy, Manaaki Foundation, Sue Crothers-Gee and Bill Gee, Kristy and Brandon Moran, Leesa and Jes Sherborne, Sarah Donovan and Jordan Shields, John Supera, Caylei and Nicholas Vogelzang, and Deb and Andy Wolkstein.

About the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival

Since its inception in 2015 as a project of Blair Thomas & Co., the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival promotes peace, equality, and justice on a global scale, presenting artists presented from around the world including Belgium, Chile, China, Denmark, England, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Mexico, Norway, Puerto Rico, Poland, Scotland, South Africa, South Korea and Spain as well as from Chicago and across the U.S.

In 2022, the festival moved from a biennial to an annual event, while it tripled its footprint in Chicago’s historic Fine Arts Building, opened its own in-house puppet fabrication division, the increasingly sought after Chicago Puppet Studio, and launched the Chicago Puppet Lab, now in its 6th cohort. The organization has increased its work to support new work development and enjoys an education space and developmental residency at the studio designed to continually help incubate more works of boundary-breaking puppetry in Chicago.

It’s kismet 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.

The Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival continues to grow and expand under the guidance of Co-Founder and Artistic Director Blair Thomas, Executive Director Sandy Smith Gerding, a dedicated staff, and a generous, active board of directors. For more, visit chicagopuppetfest.org and follow the festival on Facebook, Instagram or Vimeo, hashtag #ChiPuppetFest.