8th Annual Puppetfest Warms the City

In the depth of winter all over Chicago, the Puppets are here!!!  In these days when getting artists from other nations to our shores is a herculean and thankless task, the folks at the Chicago International Puppet Theatre Festival lived up to their names, despite life threatening storms and wind chills and the possibility that an artist would be turned away at the airport. CIPTF brought the most moving and beautiful art to us from the south side to the north side. A pro tip: buy tickets when they go on sale at the end of 2026– many of the shows sold out  long before opening night, and while the website has this cool function where you can find tickets, you might miss something truly amazing if you don’t shop early.  Also some shows  were able to add additional viewings, or you could standby and get in,  but don’t get shut out of one of the best parts of winter in Chi Town.

This year’s fest was a reassertion of humanity and of hope and kindness in the darkest times. Strange to think about objects brought to life bringing us our humanity on stage, kind of the direct opposite of AI faking humanity, but these exquisitely crafted bits of fiber and wood and clay made over hours by dedicated human hands often in community became a kind of sacramental ritual that we as a bundled up audience could partake of. 

I wanted to pretend this year that I was traveling to Chicago just for this as I have done for the Berlinale film fest and Canada’s Stratford Festival.  My life bulloxed it up a bit but for about 8 of the 12 days of the festival I could immerse myself in whatever was offered and I even got to spend time in the Puppet Hub, a gathering spot, exhibition and coffee house on the 4th floor of the Fine Arts Building where the Puppet fest admin offices are located. 

I began with Plexis Polaire’s A Doll House which adapted the Ibsen classic of a woman trapped in domesticity creating an unsettling Jungian nightmare. The ever enlarging spider stalking Nora, the wife who strains at her marriage constraints, is iconic and joins Shelob and Aragog as an epic arachnid. The fest highlighted artists and companies from Norway, even as Chicago became an arctic village while they were in town. The life sized puppets became eerie mirrors of humans, so close and not yet real, so surreal. Plexus Polaire brought 3 works to the fest and all of them had some form of development at the Company Residencies at Nordland Visual Theatre on th Lofoten Islands which is located in a small  fishing village north of the Arctic Circle.  Perhaps these puppets are more used to the cold than we are!

The London based company Blind Summit returned to Chicago with the naughty and bawdy and hysterically funny and quite sweet Sex Lives of Puppets conceived by Mark Down who also directed along with Ben Keton and was one of the puppeteers. A collaboration between Blind Summit and the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles it was an honest look at real people where puppets showcase the joys and silliness and sadness and connection– it was diverse and honest and moving. Blind Summit often features puppets that portray older people and topics that are not common: they like to say that they seek to subvert  people’s expectations of puppetry, but my experience has been that this is a group of artists that digs deep to tell moving stories with puppets that become friends.

In  a very European film fest way Laura Heit’s art film shorts in a movie theatre I did not know existed at the Chicago institution Tje Music Box. This velvet curtained viewing room is like watching a film inside my childhood music box, which is totally appropriate for this artist who also brought her Matchbox tiny puppet shows to the fest and had some exquisite objects and hand drawn animations at the Puppet Hub.  Many of her films were less than a minute but the entire reel was compelling and demonstrated Heit’s enormous range.  Every year the fest features some type of filmic puppetry and Heit is a master at visual tales. 

I managed to squeeze in two local masterpieces because of added shows and seats: Manual Cinema’s latest work The 4th Witch about a girl who survives the French occupation and has chilling mirrors of our time, and Festival founder and director Blair Thomas’s dharma talk as puppet show, a two parter that began with Passing Through The Bardo and concluded with Does a Dog have a Buddha Nature (pick up your souvenir good dog bad dog mugs in the gift shop) I found both shows profoundly meaningful and they left me changed. 

Next up in my immersive puppet week with Untitled Theatre Company #61 and Yara Arts Groups monumental and yet tiny The Left Hand of Darkness, a powerful adaptation of Ursala K. Le Guin’s landmark 1969 feminist sci fi novel. Tom Lee is the co director of the Festival and the adjacent Chicago Puppet Studio so this artistry is very much home grown.  The show took place in the jewel box Wirtz Center in Northwestern’s Abbot Hall so it was intimate while being planetary.  If you did not read the book and you really should, its about Genly, an emissary to an alien world traveling alone in the universe in an effort to include them in an intergalactic culture.  The planet, named Winter for obvious reasons, is populated by ambisexual characters, and challenges concepts of gender and communication. It’s a stunningly contemporary and relevant work and the cast let by Miguel Long as the Emissary and Winter Jones as Estraven, a Winter noble combine humans and puppets in a magical way. Michael Zerang’s original score is a must hear. 

I finished up first  with a Roald Dahl romp with The Enormous Crocodile: review here https://www.chicagostageandscreen.com/post/dahl-s-crocodile-a-symbol-of-our-times

Then as my finale,  I headed over to the Dance Center of Columbia College where the Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust presented a short version of the story of the Ramayana in the form of About Ram.These artists from New Delhi brought us in to Prince Ram’s war with the demon king Ravana after he abducts his wife Sita and aligns with the monkey general Hanuman. In one short hour we experience this classic myth and end with Ram’s return to rule. The show uses projections and an enormous traditional leather shadow puppet Ravana.  It was a warm ending to a truly spectacular festival for me, and while I don’t ever love the onset of winter, the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival gives us something to anxiously await in the dark days of January each year.  Get more info and archived rundowns of this and previous festivals here: https://chicagopuppetfest.org/

Be sure to sign up for the mailing list so you can be ready for the next Fest!

 For more reviews go to https://www.theatreinchicago.com