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:

10:00 pm - 7:00 pm: The Puppet Hub

In addition to the incredible pageant of international and U.S. puppetry artists, the Puppet Hub is back and open throughout the festival. It's the perfect place to relax between shows, get a bite to eat, meet up with friends, make new ones, and learn more about contemporary puppetry. Attractions include:           

Lessons in Puppetry by Myra Su
In this exhibit, Myra Su shares her various puppetry experiments (the good, the bad, and the ugly) and lessons she's learned along the way.

Puppetry Under the Sea
Inspired by coastal parades and spectacles, over 20 puppets that were designed and built by the Chicago Puppet Studio, for Drury Lane Theatre's production of "The Little Mermaid", will be on display.

Pop-Up Puppet Shop
The perfect spot to stock up on your newest Chicago Puppet Fest swag.

The Spoke and Bird Pop-Up Cafe
Stop by The Spoke and Bird Pop-Up Cafe if you're coming to a show at the Studebaker Theater, workshops, readings and special events in the Fine Arts Building, or any Puppet Fest show downtown. Enjoy coffee, tea, winter soups and baked treats in a cozy, puppet-inspired setting, and check out the surrounding exhibits.

5:00 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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5:00 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.Click here to Buy Tickets

7:00 pm: Baxter Theatre and Handspring Puppet Co - J.M. Coetzee's Life and Times of Michael K

In this stunning transformation of Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee's Booker Prize-winning novel by the same name, a humble man finds solace in nature as he takes an epic journey through a mythical, war-torn landscape. In search of his mother's ancestral home, he finds strength in his own humanity and a profound connection to the earth. With puppets by Handspring Puppet Company, known for building the War Horse and Little Amal, Cape Town's Baxter Theatre brings us a new level of exquisite bunraku-style puppet theater.

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