The 2025 Chicago Puppet Fest will span 12 days and dozens of Chicago venues, presenting  an international pageant of puppet artists sharing more than 100 puppetry activities. Get set for all-ages spectacle shows in landmark theaters, intimate works on smaller stages, and the always popular, adults-only, late night puppet cabarets.

Schedule of Events:

6:00 pm: Tram Arts Trust: Maati Katha

In the dangerous and magical land of Sunderbans - the vast forested delta area in West Bengal (Eastern India) and Bangladesh - great rivers combine and split before merging into the Bay of Bengal. Here, living is a fragile balance between land and water, forest and field, domestic and wild, calm and storm and, of course, people. The legend and philosophy of "Bonbibi" looms large in popular imagination, "You are all connected: the crocodile, the tiger, water, forest, land, all human beings…All!" Real-time sculpting meets traditional storytelling as shape shifting ‘maati' (clay, mud, soil, earth, land) shines in the Land of 18 Tides.

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8:00 pm: La ruee vers l'or: Arctic Tall Tales

In the mid-1900s only a handful of intrepid hunters and adventurers remain scattered across Greenland's northeast coast. Inspired by writings from Jørn Riel's scientific expedition in the 1950s and 1960s and the subsequent, celebrated graphic novels created 2009-2018 by Frenchman Herve Tanquerelle, Arctic Tall Tales brings tales of adventure, independence, isolation and nature. It's not easy to keep a cool head in the harsh conditions, and yet, the vast wilderness, the majestic snow-covered expanse and the unlikely fates of trusty comrades leave us asking: are they truths, lies or myths? Regardless, together they are larger than life, with puppetry, storytelling, and a live Foley artist generating sound effects in real time. The effect is a universe both uproarious and poetic.

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