The 2026 Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival

Featuring companies from 10 countries, including Plexus Polaire and Théâtre de la Massue from France, the festival will showcase a vibrant array of puppetry styles and celebrate the creativity and artistry of puppeteers from around the world.

Take a sneak peek at the lineup below!

Plexus Polaire –  A Doll’s House
January 22-24, 2026 – DePaul’s Merle Reskin Theatre 
Plunge into a world on the edge of the fantastic in A Doll’s House, an eerie retelling of Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 classic. Created by and starring artistic director Yngvild Aspeli, the production blends puppets, actors, music, and video projections. Life-sized puppets, dead birds, and a possessed female choir haunt the house as Nora, the heroine, confronts the collision of her reality with the web of lies she has woven. This immersive performance invites audiences to reflect on the choices that shape their own lives.
Tickets
On January 25 & 31, Plexus Polaire will participate in the Volkenburg Puppetry Symposium.

Théâtre de la Massue: La Méridienne
Jan 22 – 28, 2026 – Private Wicker Park Location
(address shared after ticket purchase two weeks prior to event)
Don’t miss this unique farm-to-table, family-style dinner for 12 people, paired with a five-minute puppet show performed for each guest, one at a time. The puppet play La Méridienne tells the story of the fragility of human thought in front of the passage of time. The puppet showman, invisible and tucked away in his theater, shows his solo viewer the whole life of humanity—birth, life and its apprenticeships, then disappearance within the universe—as if it’s happening in a dream, in just five minutes.
Tickets 

About the artists
France’s internationally acclaimed Plexus Polaire returns for its fifth Chicago Puppet Festival, having already wowed audiences with spectacular, sold out performances of Dracula: Lucy’s Dream (2025), Moby Dick (2023), Chambre Noire (2019) and Cendres (2017). Now they’re back with large-scale spectacle, human size bunraku puppets, hypnotic video projection and their signature style of imbuing the puppet with storytelling power.

Ézéquiel Garcia-Romeu, artistic director of the Théâtre de la Massue, is an inventor of universes, director and scenographer. He explores contemporary forms of puppetry and new forms of stage writing. His shows have been programmed at the Festival Mondial de Charleville- Mézières, the Théâtre National de Nice, Théâtre National de Chaillot, the Odéon, the Théâtre de la Commune, the Auditorium of the Musée d’Orsay, the Festival in d’Avignon, the Berliner Festspiele, and numerous festivals and stages around the world.