In the past 40 years, theatre with puppets and dolls has dared to embark on new roads. Seemingly insurmountable borders to others genres have dissolved. The peep-show became too narrow for the puppets; hence spaces to move needed to be enlarged. Puppets and acting came a little closer. The puppet’s design broke fresh ground as well. Starting with marionettes, hand and stick puppets, the playing techniques developed at a great speed that even naming the puppets became difficult. Not only did children discover this “other theatre” anew, but also became an adult audience more and more interested. A fantastical stage world was created for young and old, sometimes funny, sometimes poetical or even scary, but always worth seeing.
The exhibition shows theater puppets from municipal puppet theatres of the former GDR and the new eastern states of Germany of the past 40 years. Next to hand and stick puppets, stick and string marionettes, table and large puppets, full body masks, moving mouth puppets, hand stick puppets and Theatrum Mundi puppets are on view, but also many others that have not yet been named.
The majority of them were not exhibited in Dresden. Works by Christian Werdin and Barbara and Günter Weinhold, who provided new and decisive ideas for other puppeteers and who gained international recognition, are exhibited next to puppets by Marita Bachmaier, Frank Alexander Engel, Anne Frank, Antje Hohmuth, Peter Gemarius de Kepper, Gottfried Reinhardt, Udo Schneeweiß and Sabine Tischmeier.
