Baltic Focus

This year, the world’s most influential contemporary puppet theatre event — the Festival Mondial des Théâtres de Marionnettes in Charleville-Mézières, France — welcomes a special northern wind, a celebration of bold visual theatre from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Three theatres — Estonian Theatre for Young Audiences, Latvian Puppet Theatre, and Vilnius Theatre Lėlė — bring distinct voices and shared sensibilities from the Baltic region to the global puppet stage.

Rooted in centuries of storytelling and sharpened by a contemporary visual language, Baltic theatre speaks without borders. We are fluent in visuals because here gestures often say more than words, and imagination is the mother tongue.

Baltic Visual Theatre Showcase is a joint initiative of professional puppeteers from the three Baltic States to develop and strengthen cultural exchanges between Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, to promote and publicize the region's visual theatre (puppetry, object-based, interdisciplinary theatre through visual expression) in the international arena. The project concept, conceived in 2018, has been successfully implemented twice: in 2022 in Tallinn and in 2024 in Vilnius, where festivals and other professional networking events were organised. In 2025, the project is planned to be substantially renewed and expanded for the first time outside the Baltic region in France, and it will return to the region in 2026 to take place in Latvia.