The Melbourne Festival of Puppetry returns for six days of shadow puppets, world premieres and school-holiday chaos across the city.
Puppets are staging a citywide takeover: the Melbourne Festival of Puppetry lands across Naarm from 22 September for six days.
This year the Melbourne Festival of Puppetry has stretched well beyond its usual patch, adding Arts Centre Melbourne, ACMI and the Motley Wherehaus to a lineup that still winds through La Mama and the community of Carlton. The program packs in workshops, masterclasses, puppet films, roving street performers and a run of free shows, with something pitched at kids, teenagers and adults alike. Ticketed events sit between $25 and $35, and there’s a pile of free activities layered on top for families filling the school-holiday stretch.
Melbourne Festival of Puppetry
- Melbourne Festival of Puppetry
- 22 September – 27 September
- Arts Centre Melbourne, ACMI, the Motley Wherehaus, La Mama and around Carlton
- Tickets $25 – $35, plus loads of free activities
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
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The festival has been around since 2015, when Lemony S Puppet Theatre and La Mama Theatre first teamed up to launch it. It has surfaced almost every two years since, welcoming more than 350 artists from across Australia along with international guests from Aotearoa New Zealand, the UK, Cambodia and the Philippines. That track record comes with a Green Room Awards nod for Curatorial Contribution, plus individual shows recognised as standout theatre for both younger crowds and adults. This edition leans into puppetry reimagined for modern audiences, spanning everything from marionettes to shadow work and gentle storytelling to full-tilt wildness.
Families have a solid stack to pick through. Lemony S Puppet Theatre brings Little Blue Dot to Arts Centre Melbourne, a stargazing piece built with Monash University that mixes science and feeling, while Little Wing Puppets reworks the Pinocchio story as Trinket the Robot at La Mama Courthouse. The program also delivers a world premiere in Snow on a Summer’s Day, an intimate work created and performed by mother and daughter Youngkyu Kwon and Kay Yasugi, threading memory, paper and puppetry across Korea, Japan and Australia. Regional Victoria’s Georgie Rose Puppets adds The Boy Who Lost His Light, a visual theatre journey of handmade puppets, live music and projection.
Older audiences get their own corner too. The Motley Wherehaus runs a teen and adult strand headed by Dr Pathicus’ Unnatural Adventures from Fran and Char, the eerie Please Remain by Ben Anderson Presents, and Puppet Rats’ tragicomic reworking of Die, Die, Die, Old People, Die. Elsewhere, Bunk Puppets’ surreal Sticks, Stones, Broken Bones lands at La Mama Courthouse, while daily roving acts at Arts Centre Melbourne and around Carlton sit alongside free shows at La Mama HQ for anyone chasing a low-cost outing. Billed as Australia’s only puppet festival, it gathers a big chunk of the artform in one place.
For more information, head here.
