Ljubljana - The 16th biennial festival of contemporary puppetry LUTKE is opening in Ljubljana on Friday, to feature 18 productions from Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Spain and Slovenia until 27 September.

Organised by the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre (LGL) and partners, the festival has been curated by Ajda Rooss. The productions featured are at the intersection of intermediality and contemporary visual art that inspires forms of visual and material theatre, the theatre of the object and shadows, they say.

Some of the examples include The Great He-Goat, a production by the Belgian theatre and dance company Cie Mossoux-Bonté which has been inspired by the 18th-century Spanish court painter Francisco de Goya's Black Paintings.

French painter and sculptor Olivier de Sagazan will become a live sculpture in his show Transfiguration, and Xavier Bobes from Spain will perform Corpus, an intimate encounter between sculpture, animator and musician in a reflection on the relationship between the bodies of human, animal and plant.

The Vilnius-based theatre Lele will explore the central maxim of Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by means of static impressions of miniature replicas of sculptures such as David by Michelangelo.

Israeli creator Michal Svironi with turn the stage into Carte Blanche in a fusion of visual, fine and performing arts packaged into a colourful collage focusing on the theme of divorce.

Meanwhile, Spanish visual artist Andrea Diaz Reboredo reflects on architecture, spaces and their meaning in a family story in her stage debut M.A.R.

Other shows offer the audience to choose their viewing perspective (Something Softens by Renaud Herbin), brutally deconstruct Shakespeare's tragedy (Macbeth Muet by La Fille du Laitier) and question the truth (The Mountain by Agrupacion Senor Serrano).

Directed by Slovenian Matija Solce, the puppet cabaret shows Darkroom, by LGL, and Exit, by the Czech ensembles Fekete Seretlek and Studio Damúza, are based on Hans Christian Andersen's stories.

The productions will be staged at LGL, Cankarjev Dom and Kino Šiška.

As part of the Creative Europe project EU Contemporary Puppetry Critical Platform, which is led by LGL in collaboration with partners from the UK, Croatia and Lithuania, the festival is also hosting a critic's residence where young people from the four countries will write reflections and critical notes on a selection of festival productions under the mentorship of renowned critics and theatre scholars.