Puppetry in Eastern and Western Europe

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In January of 2024, I attended a matinee performance of Grupa Coincidentia and
Figurentheater Wilde & Vogel’s Krabat at the Chicago International Puppet Festival. It was my first time seeing puppetry from a country outside of the United States (Grupa Coincidentia being Polish and Figurentheater Wilde & Vogel being German) and it completely blew my mind. The construction, the staging, the movements, all of it, were like nothing I had ever seen before. It played with the slight disconnect between what your eyes see and what your brain interprets. It was something completely new but felt like an ancient performance, older than time. I attended a panel that Pawel Chomcyzc and Dagmara Sowa from Grupa Coincidentia spoke at and the reverence they referred to the art of puppetry, and the art of object theater in general, has continued to stick with me.