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THE KO FESTIVAL OF PERFORMANCE, is a festival of ideas — where the only certainty is surprise. Our performances value diversity, authenticity, and are curated to incite curiosity and to provoke compelling conversations with global, national local, and personal resonances.

Each summer we present 5 weeks of original, devised work. The season is curated on a theme and lively discussions follow the performances and provide opportunities for civic dialogue. We also offer a Story Slam, and often the METTAWEE RIVER THEATER COMPANY’s all-ages outdoor event with masks, puppets & live music plus:

*A unique array of 6-day workshops
*Facilitated discussions and lobby displays that contextualize the ideas presented in each piece in an effort to engender inter-audience/artist exchange.
*Rehearsal residencies where individual artists or ensembles can develop new work
*Internships for college students and young theater professionals, and adult theater-makers wanting to recharge and retrain.
*We often include an interactive installation so that all may contribute to the thematic thinking.

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The Association of ”The Theatre of Black and White” in Imatra has been organizing The International Black and White Theatre Festival since year 2004. Right since that time Black and White Theatre Festival has become well-known event for many people of the world. At the festival we could see the performing of different theatres from 46 countries, so far more than 250 shows and performances. For 16 years, Black and White Theatre Festival has presented a huge variety of different styles: dance theatre, ballet, pantomime, circus, traditional drama, opera, puppet theatre and street performing. The purpose of the festival is – to represent the international theatre in all its manifestation and genres.

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Since 1992, this trailblazing summer festival sizzles with over 100 artists presenting queer theater, dance, music, literature, puppetry, comedy, and homoeroticism for the whole family! The longest-running annual LGBTQ+ festival in the world, HOT! has been a pioneer of queer arts and culture for 27 years.

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For 16 years, Black and White Theatre Festival has presented a huge variety of different styles: dance theatre, ballet, pantomime, circus, traditional drama, opera, puppet theatre and street performing. The purpose of the festival is – to represent the international theatre in all its manifestation and genres.

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The main goal of “Maskarada” is to discover the variety of masks which contemporary theatres put on. The festival provides performances for children and adults, workshops, and plenary sessions.

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Since its creation in 1992, the Puppet Theater in Paris has the challenge of defending and promoting contemporary forms of puppet theater. The festival is dedicated to contemporary puppetry in all its forms will allow to express even more strongly the richness, the diversity and the inventiveness of this art.

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The Festival takes special care in presenting each year a rich and homogeneous programme focused around a special theme, celebrating the culture of a country or a city, or exploring a special subject. The Festival likes to be daring in its choice of artists, works and performances.

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Festival Objectives
• To cultivate the imagination through the traditions and contemporary practices of the art of puppetry.
• To establish Chicago as a cultural center for puppetry by presenting work of the highest quality as well as creating access to leaders and innovators in the art form through workshops and classes.

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nternational puppet theatre festival TIP-Fest brings the magic of puppetry and lights up dark autumn! Festival presents versatile program of new puppet theatre from Finland and all around! TIP-Fest is organised in the heart of puppet theatre capital in Turku by Aura of Puppets puppet theatre network.

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Since its first edition in 2007, FITA has presented a panorama of the most significant production regarding the Brazilian and world animation theater.

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The Seoul Performing Arts Festival (SPAF) is Korea’s largest international performing arts festival with the largest scale and history in Korea. It is co-hosted by the Korea Arts Management Support Center and the Korean Culture and Arts Committee sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism .

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For over 50 years Dimitria Festival continues to represent the most modern trends in all artistic forms and to utilise the heritage of Thessaloniki and Greece. Through new artistic landscapes of sound, image, and experience, operatic elements are combined with puppetry, technology becomes a crucial part of the performing arts, the performative practices of theatre and dance meet performance art, Greek musicians meet international musicians.

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Fandíme Divadlu
September

Festival Aims
•To present a Show Case of the Czech theatre
•To introduce the most outstanding and remarkable foreign productions together with a digest of the Czech ones, within a broad thematic and style scale of the scenes (drama, music, dance, puppet or street theatre).
•To collate Czech professional drama art with top productions from abroad, namely from European countries, to draw Czech both theatrical and spectator audience nearer to modern trends of European and world theatre, and thus to contribute to our integration into European structures.
•To create a space for meeting people of theatre among themselves.

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The Festival, founded in 1961, has grown steadily over the editions. For ten days, the whole city lives to the rhythm of the Festival. The halls, the gymnasiums, the streets, the courts, become so many places of spectacles. All the techniques, all the genres and all the researches are welcomed: from the thread to the sheath, from the shade to the bunraku, from the object to the screen, from the most intimate form to the giant puppet…the traditional spectacles rub shoulders the most modern forms, meeting a wide range of audience.

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Kulttuurimylly Festival is the first ever international street theatre and puppetry festival in Eastern Helsinki, Finland. This festival will bring a bright beam of Cuban sunshine to the north as our dear friends and internationally acclaimed artists, puppet master and street theatre wizard Adan Rodriquez & extraordinary musician and magical theatre composer Raul Valdes with their team of street theatre artists from Cuba will join us. The festival programme will include Street Theatre & Puppetry Carnival, Cuban Puppetry and Street Theatre Master Class for professional artists, Art in Suburbs Seminar and other performances, workshops and special events.

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Divadelna Nitra
September

The International Festival Divadelna Nitra is the largest theatre festival in Slovakia. It is also one of the most important international activities in the cultural area in Slovakia. Divadelna Nitra is a recognised activity in the European context. It is organised every year towards the end of September since 1992. It is a selective, but non-competitive parade of the top European production focused on mainly the drama/play, susceptible to dance, music, puppet theatre and also the visual theatre. It selects the non-traditional, innovative and inspirational scenic theatre, it informs about the new tendencies and about the new names of the artists. It consists of the rich accompanying and working programme, it offers space to other types of art and to the representation of regional cultural activities.

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Puppet Theater Festival of Tehran Mobarak is the first international theater festival in Iran, after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. 

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Tampere Theatre Festival is the oldest and the largest professional theatre festival in the Nordic countries, serving as a display window for the most interesting and up-to-the-minute productions in Finnish theatre, and attracting leading international guests from all corners of the globe. Annually in the beginning of August the city of Tampere becomes Finland’s theatre capital as local and international performing arts troupes take over the city’s stages and squares.

The festival programme includes new drama, modernised classics, dance theatre, contemporary circus and street theatre.

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SAMPO Festival brings renowned puppet artists from around the world to Helsinki for the third time to perform and take part in workshops and discussions about and around puppetry. 

Our program offers memorable, touching and entertaining performances for children and adults. One of the biggest puppetry festivals in Finland, it showcases artists from across the field, different styles of puppetry and visual theatre, and crosses borders between different fields of art. In addition to performances, the program also features workshops and diverse artist meetings.

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Materia Prima presents surprising and revealing performances, in which the theatre combines with a new circus and dance theatre, dance intermingles with multimedia, as well as forms of puppet theatre, masks and shadows, where actors’ acting often contradicts the principles of physics and where the imagination has no limits. The Festival program consists of attractive, phenomenal performances and perfectly performed performances.

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Festivals

  • The Ko Festival of Performance

    The Ko Festival of Performance

    July , Amherst, Massachusetts

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  • Black & White Theatre Festival

    Black & White Theatre Festival

    June , Imatra, Finland

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  • HOT! Festival

    HOT! Festival

    June , New York, United States

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  • International Black and White Theatre Festival

    International Black and White Theatre Festival

    June , Imatra, Finland

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  • International Festival of Animated Forms: Maskarada

    International Festival of Animated Forms: Maskarada

    May , Rzeszow, Poland

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  • Biennale des arts de la marionnette

    Biennale des arts de la marionnette

    May , Paris, France

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  • Al Bustan Festival

    Al Bustan Festival

    February , Beirut, Lebanon

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  • Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival

    Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival

    January , Chicago, United States

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  • Turku International Puppetry Festival TIP-Fest

    Turku International Puppetry Festival TIP-Fest

    November , Turku, Finland

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  • Festival Internacional De Teatro Der Animação

    Festival Internacional De Teatro Der Animação

    October , Florianópolis, Brazil, South America

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  • Seoul Performing Arts Festival

    Seoul Performing Arts Festival

    October , Seoul, South Korea

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  • Dimitria Festival

    Dimitria Festival

    October , Thessaloniki, Greece

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  • Fandíme Divadlu

    Fandíme Divadlu

    September , Pilsen, Czechia

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  • Festival mondial des théâtres de marionettes

    Festival mondial des théâtres de marionettes

    September , Charleville-Mézières, France

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  • Kulttuurimylly Festival

    Kulttuurimylly Festival

    September , Helsinki, Finland

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  • Divadelna Nitra

    Divadelna Nitra

    September , Nitra, Slovakia

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  • Tehran International Puppet Theatre Festival

    Tehran International Puppet Theatre Festival

    August , Tehran, Iran

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  • Tampere Theatre Festival

    Tampere Theatre Festival

    August , Tampere, Finland

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  • SAMPO – International Puppet Theatre Festival

    SAMPO – International Puppet Theatre Festival

    August , Helsinki, Finland

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  • Materia Prima. International Festival of the Form Theatre

    Materia Prima. International Festival of the Form Theatre

    February , Cracow, Poland

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