This summer, the travelling exhibition that has been touring Estonia since 2023 returns home to the Museum of Puppetry Arts and is for the first time opening to audiences in Tallinn!
The Museum of Puppetry Arts in Nunne Street in the Old Town of Tallinn is home to more than 800 puppets. The exhibition The Magical World of Puppets offers a playful and versatile addition to the Museum of Puppetry Arts main exhibition, bringing the puppets’ special features, characters and stage stories into focus from a different angle. After stopping in nine locations across Estonia, the exhibition is now reaching the final venue of the tour – the Museum of Puppetry Arts.
Puppetry, or the art of animating an inanimate object, is a thousands of years old art form that offers endless possibilities. On the stage, puppets can do things that are impossible for humans: flying, turning from inanimate to animate in a second, or disappearing completely. The exhibition opens the journey of a puppet from creation to the beginning of its stage life. Visitors can learn about the work of puppet makers, study historic design sketches, and try out for themselves how to design and play with a puppet. Various puppet types – shadow puppets, tabletop puppets, glove puppets, rod puppets and marionettes – are represented by examples from the productions of the Estonian Theatre for Young Audiences.
A visit to the exhibition may be combined with a shadow puppet workshop, where each visitor can create their very own puppet to play with in the museum as well as at home. If you would like to book an exhibition tour with a puppet workshop in English, please contact us at museum@eestinoorsooteater.ee.
