The room where puppets live

We don’t want to name this room “a museum”. There are puppet-artists, which went to a stage but now they are “pensioners” and don’t take part in performances.

Princes and princesses, Kashchey and Baba-Yaga, valiant knights and three Pigs, huge Nose and masks of Bear, Fox, Punch-puppets, marionettes, puppets of different systems and different degrees of complexity. These puppets are also a special report about an occupation of art director, painter, masters and actors of the puppet theatre, about variety of expressive means of the puppet theatre and its ways of dialog with the audience.

The history of the Arkhangelsk puppet theatre lives in this room together with puppets. There is a memory about people who devoted lots of years of their life to the theatre, a memory about events connected not only with the history of the theatre but also with the history of our city and the country. Old press cuttings and yellowed (because of the time) playbills of 30s, 40s and 50s…, puppets of the soldier Shveyka and Gogol’s St. Petersburg, Cinderella and heroes of Decamerone…

In puppets’ room you can watch compositions and drawings of children (their answers on the theatre’s questions) which tell us about children’s problems and happiness. Also you can meet there puppets made by children – dwarfs, mermaids, snowmen and different other fairytale heroes, which leave behind and inspire an imagination of theatrical painters and art directors.

There is an old orange lampshade in the middle of the room. This lampshade illuminates a round table and a silver handbell under it. It is also a part of the history. Nowadays children and adults meet under this lampshade to read and discuss stories and tales “for children” and “about children”.