 Aug 17 - Sept 1

 Maribor

Over a dozen puppet theatre productions from Slovenia and abroad for both children and adults will be staged in Maribor during its annual Summer Puppet Pier festival.

Most of the 14 productions will be performed at the Maribor Puppet Theatre, with some of the performances taking place in the open air, including in the park and the public pool on the Drava island.

Apart from Slovenia, the performers come from Finland, Italy, Hungary and Slovakia.

The festival will also feature creative workshops and a sound walk along the Drava River.

One of the main guests of the festival will be Ilya Kaminsky, a Ukrainian-born author from the US, whose Deaf Republic, a show for adults, will be featured in collaboration with the Poetry and Wine Festival, hosted by the nearby medieval town of Ptuj.

"We put the show together before the start of the war in Ukraine and then decided to keep it in our repertoire," said Katarina Klančnik Kocutar, director of the Maribor Puppet Theatre, the organiser of the festival.

"It became clear that there are increasingly many reasons for such a show, one that's about dictatorship, not about a specific war but wars in general," Klančnik Kocutar added.