Who is who

The Ljubljana Puppet Theatre (LPT) is the main Slovenian puppet theatre staging puppet and drama performances for children, youngsters and adults. Its predominant target audiences are children and young people. The public institution was established in 1948 (as the City Puppet Theatre) and has been based in Mestni dom in Krekov Square since 1984. In its work, the LPT builds on the hundred-year tradition of Slovenian puppetry. With the establishment of the Museum of Puppetry at the Ljubljana Castle, the LPT officially became the caretaker of this precious, century-old heritage. The theatre manages five regular and several smaller, occasional venues. At these venues, which offer seating for approximately a thousand people, it produces fifteen premieres a year and is visited by around 110,000 spectators.

The LPT also pays special attention to cultural and artistic education in all its dimensions and at the national level cooperates in the endeavours to strengthen the standards and systemically place quality cultural content in the programmes of educational institutions. Every two years, it therefore joins forces with the Slovenian Theatre Institute and Cankarjev dom in organising the Golden Stick Festival, a national festival providing an overview of theatre performances for children and youth.

The second festival organised by the LPT, which takes place every even-numbered year, is the LUTKE International Puppet Festival. This festival brings to Slovenia the best foreign puppet productions and promotes all kinds of contemporary interdisciplinary and genre developments. In addition to its regular programme, the LPT has in recent years developed a special programme profile for emerging artists and forms named BiTeater. This programme includes experimental productions that enrich the medium of puppet theatre with other artistic registers. BiTeater traces the limits of LPT’s performative variety, which ranges from cultivating the marionette tradition to contemporary problem plays for youth.

The LPT is a member of the International Puppetry Association UNIMA, ASSITEJ – International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People, the Slovenian Puppetry Artists Institution, Small Size, an international association focused on productions for early years (under six years of age), and one of the founding members of NEECPA, a network of puppet centres joining primarily the key players from Scandinavia, the Baltic region and Russia.A short clip presenting  Ljubljana Puppet Theatre >>