Stuffed Puppet / Neville Tranter (AU/NL)

Australian puppeteer Neville Tranter has been delighting audiences for more than 30 years. Now he has taken on the bizarre story of the rise and fall of the tyrant Ubu and his kingdom – as a solo piece with a large arsenal of folding-mouth puppets. Ubu is impulsive, violent and self-centered. He makes stupidity his greatest power. Together with his ambitious wife Ma Ubu, he strikes relentlessly when he encounters weakness. Both are guided by greed, lust, pride and anger. Their emotional profundity reaches as far as a flat sheet of paper, and it is not for nothing that they sail out of this story in a two-dimensional paper boat. The Ubus of this world do not rule endlessly, but other Ubus will follow them sooner or later!

“The grand master of puppet theatre has grown older, his step noticeably heavier. When he puts the walking stick aside and stands on stage with his Stuffed Puppet Theatre, Neville Tranter mutates again into a soulfully acting magician who fully subordinates himself to his figures as a servant spirit. He breathes into them an almost diabolical life of their own and makes sure that the hall crackles with tension.” (Lahrer Anzeiger, 2022)