World Puppetry Day 2025

Slovenian message of Ajda Rooss, president of Slovenian Unima

Puppet - a Reflection of Transience and Yet the Eternity of the Moment

The thought is born in Tallinn, in north-east Europe, where the echoes of history never cease. In a city where a song has become a weapon of resistance and a symbol of freedom, the awareness of the fragility of peace remains. Here, the traces of past regimes, the shadows of the Cold War and the tensions of the present intertwine, giving the streets of the city the feeling that history is not just a memory, but a force that constantly shapes the present.

At a time when dehumanisation is not only taking place on the battlefields, but also in the media, the economic interests and the cold calculations of the powerful, the Estonian puppet theatre (Eesti Noorsooteater) offers a shocking reflection on war with Frontline, directed by Tin Grabnar. It places the audience at the centre of the conflict and actively confronts them with questions of responsibility, truth and humanity.

The performance is part of the Creative Europe's project Transport, which explores globalisation and raises fundamental questions about ethics and human dignity. How can one remain human in a world in which the boundaries between truth and manipulation are blurred and humanity disappears in impersonal power mechanisms?

The puppet celebrates on the festival of spring, the equinox, the transition between light and darkness, between life and death - the meeting point where opposites come together in harmony. Like the landscape on the Baltic coast, which breaks out of the cold and finds its rhythm again in the transition from winter to spring, the puppet reflects both the transience and the eternity of the moment. Just as the ice breaks and reveals the life beneath, the puppet carries a silent pulse - an expectation of movement, a meaning, an unspoken story. Its heart beats in search of meaning, in longing for life. Its essence comes to life through the breath and will of the animator - the one who breathes life into it (animare).

In a world saturated with images but impoverished of authentic experience, in which the individual is increasingly drowning in the noise of the masses and aimless haste, the puppet preserves something original - the memory of the power of the stage, of the symbolic language of gestures, of the miracle of animation. It harbours the age-old question: What does it mean to be alive? Is life just movement or is there more to it? While man becomes alienated from nature, the puppet remains true to its rhythm - a cyclical awakening that holds the promise of transformation.

It is a silent storyteller, a messenger of symbols that arise in the depths of the human psyche, a whisperer of the unspeakable. When she crosses the threshold between silence and movement, it comes alive and becomes a reflection of the universal human experience. Its power lies in its paradox - it is a presence in absence, a voice in silence, alive in its lifelessness. In this duality, it reflects the human longing for meaning and transcendence.

Between the dust and the light of the stage, between oblivion and momentary existence, its story is born. In its fragile yet expressive movement, the human experience is embodied - that which distinguishes us from machines and algorithms. In a world that is becoming increasingly mechanical and impersonal, the puppet reminds us of the preciousness of existence with its tangibility and vulnerability. Although it is dependent on the animator, it does not lose its power - on the contrary, when it comes to life, it becomes a mirror of a person searching for their own path in a time of loss of meaning.

A puppet never really dies. It survives because art survives, because man's irrepressible desire to create survives. When the animator ends the performance, its spirit remains - in the spectator's memory, in the feeling it has left behind, in something intangible but profoundly human.

Like the spring that returns again and again.

Ajda Rooss
President of Slovenian Unima