The 8th Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival opens January 21 and runs through February 1. Those 12 days of puppetry will brighten our winter and remind us of the amazing joy and ingenuity of puppetry storytelling. The performers are puppets of all sizes and types, including marionettes, glove puppets, shadow puppets, bunraku puppets, and tabletop puppets, as well as the marvelous humans who bring them to life. The puppets’ stories are powerful dramas, comedies and musicals, some for all ages, some definitely not family friendly.
The 2026 Puppet Fest is bringing more than 100 performances plus puppetry activities from opening night on Wednesday, January 21, through closing on Sunday, February 1. Performances will be held at 14 venues all over the city. And neighborhood tours will bring puppet productions to 10 Chicago neighborhood venues, including parks and community centers from Rogers Park to Grand Crossing, from Old Town to Austin.
Third Coast Review writers will be attending many of the Puppet Theater Festival performances. Watch for our dispatches with capsule reviews of the shows we see.
The range of classic and contemporary puppetry styles is wildly diverse and the performances come to us 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.
The opening night production of Dead as a Dodo by Wakka Wakka (Norway/New York) is one of three shows representing Norway, the country focus for this year’s festival. Dead as a Dodo is a mesmerizing musical odyssey about survival, transformation, and the power of true friendship.
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 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.
Manual Cinema, Chicago’s own shadow puppet masters, 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. Also from Chicago is Rhynoceron by local puppeteer and Jeff Award-winning puppet designer KT Shivak, a piece with numerous stage elements that unfold in clever ways featuring a life-size, life-like rhino puppet.
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.
The world premiere of 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 many Chicago puppet artists and actors.
Tickets for all performances are on sale now. This link will take you to a one-page overview of all festival events with times and locations.
Neighborhood tour performances, designed to foster an appreciation of puppetry throughout the city, are all free. The two productions to be seen in neighborhood venues are Stone by Stone from Spain and Happy Birthday, Mon Ami from Baltimore/US. Stone by Stone runs 30 minutes and Happy Birthday, Mon Ami is a 60-minute performance. Both are family-friendly.
The Puppet Hub on the fourth floor of the Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave., will feature exhibitions, a puppetry symposium and master puppetry classes with festival artists. Also on the fourth floor, the Spoke & Bird Pop-Up Café will offer snacks and beverages throughout the festival. The café opens at 12pm every day of the festival, but closing hours vary; see schedule here.
Tickets for all performances are on sale now. This link will take you to a one-page schedule of all festival events.
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