Metaforms Festival

Metaforms Festival

27-30.10.2026

The International Puppet Schools Festival “Metaforms” is a biennial festival organized by the Puppet Department of the Academy of Theatre Arts in Kraków, Wrocław Branch. It is an artistic showcase for students from puppet schools—actors, directors, and creators of form theatre. The festival has been held since the early 1990s and is one of the key platforms for exchanging experiences, ideas, and trends in contemporary puppet theatre.

Organizational Curator:

MA Katarzyna Kostenko

Artistic Curator of the Festival:

Dr Mateusz Barta

This year’s 17th International Festival of Puppet Theatre Schools – Metaforms will not be defined by a single slogan or interpretative theme.

We approach this year’s meeting as a framework in which different theatrical languages, diverse experiences, and various ways of thinking about theatre of form and related arts can come together.

We would like the meaning of this year’s gathering to emerge through relationships rather than through a slogan.

For us, the space of the Festival is a platform for co-authorship and shared presence. Our aim is for Metaforms to become a performative situation – dynamic and open, giving room to diverse artistic, scholarly, and critical thought.

We remain open to a multiplicity of voices.