Exhibition

A project supported by prestigious partners

Beneath the Puppeteers' Canvases is an iconographic exhibition dedicated to the castelet puppet in Europe, from the Middle Ages to the 19^th century. It presents a selection of 120 images (engravings, paintings, drawings), chosen from a vast archive of digital reproductions assembled over three years of research.

These works document a singular and widespread practice across centuries and European countries: the puppet show in a castelet performed in public space. The exhibition invites visitors to observe the performance in all its inseparable components: the stage, the puppets, the musicians and patterers, the audience, the performance space, economics and fabrication. It also invites a look beneath the canvas, to the hidden side: the puppeteer, manipulation, staging.

The Display

The reproductions are presented on four exhibition structures of different sizes, designed as castelets. Visitors are invited to slip inside these castelets, to occupy in turn the place of the puppeteer, the patterer, the spectator or the simple passer-by.

The Constants of a Practice

The Polichinelles

The protagonists share physical and social characteristics recognisable across all of Europe: a prominent nose, a mask or face with bright colours, humps, bells. They embody extraordinary, carnivalesque and subversive figures, linked to the role that the figure of the fool could play. Above all, they all share the same voice: an artificial voice produced by the swazzle, placed in the mouth of the puppeteer, which gives the character the essence of its personality.

Audience and Space

Performances are always shown within their setting: town, countryside or fair. The audience stands together (about thirty people from all social backgrounds, children and adults alike). The performance space is constitutive of the show.

The Economy

The show lives from the generosity of the audience. Because the puppeteer plays hidden inside the castelet, a figure becomes almost systematic at their side: the patterer. They watch over the castelet, play music, sell remedies, perform tricks. They are at once attractor, intermediary and collector.

Fabrication

An itinerant art, performed without fixed licence or permit, the castelet is light and portable, designed to be carried by one person. The castelet puppet show relies on a bespoke economy: the puppets are sculpted and sewn to fit the hand that will animate them, the castelet built to the dimensions of the puppeteer's reach. Before industrialisation, the necessary skills (wood carving, sewing, painting) were common trades, and the puppeteer was also a craftsman.

The Team

Exhibition produced by Compagnie UEUEUE
Curators: Anastasia Puppis & Léandre Simioni
Scientific committee: Cristina Grazioli (University of Padua), Anna Leone (EHESS, Paris), Didier Plassard (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, ERC PuppetPlays project)
Castelet fabrication: Paolo Saldari, Compagnia l'Aprisogni

Calendar

• 1 April – 17 May 2026: Théâtre aux Mains Nues, Paris
• January 2027: L'Hectare, Centre national de la marionnette, Vendôme, as part of the Avec ou sans fil biennial
• April – July 2027: Musée Théâtre Guignol, Brindas