FORMA, a new festival, gives a tantalizing glimpse into the fascinating universe of marionettes where old ritual meets radical stagecraft and rare objects speak across cultures and centuries.

They blink without eyes, walk without muscles, speak without voices. And in the right hands, they pulse with life. Puppets, mischievous, poetic, unsettling, have glided through centuries of performance, evading the constraints of conventional theatre while teasing our collective imagination. From 13 to 17 May, a new festival of rare objects and puppetry illuminates the shadows of an ancient art in Nice, a city that itself is the product of countless cultural influences: FORMA, short for Festival d’Objets Rares et de Marionnettes, is the brainchild of Théâtre de la Massue and its founder Ézéquiel Garcia-Romeu.

Courtesy and © Théâtre de la Massue – Cie Ézéquiel Garcia-Romeu

“A puppet is a fragment of the world we try to hold still long enough to understand”, the maestro explains. At Forma, these fragments coalesce into their own universe, whisking visitors away from the prevailing digital exhaustion.

Garcia-Romeu’s own company Théâtre de la Massue presents Le Petit Théâtre du Bout du Monde – Opus III as the festival’s philosophical centre. In this third of a multi-part creation, miniature figures navigate table-sized apocalypses with twitching precision. Their world, neither fully alive nor dead, follows laws of its own devising. Garcia-Romeu’s minimalist worlds are built not from grand spectacle, but from small gestures, creating an intimacy that speaks volumes. A meditation on civilisation rendered in sculptural miniature and meticulous detail, the piece invites itself onto the stage of the Théâtre National de Nice (Salle des Franciscains) from 14 to 16 May.

Courtesy and © Théâtre de la Massue – Cie Ézéquiel Garcia-Romeu

Where Garcia-Romeu whispers, Italian artist Marta Cuscunà shouts. Her La semplicità ingannata resurrects a forgotten Renaissance rebellion through mechanical masks and virtuosic vocal work. Five puppet-heads become a chorus of revolutionary nuns, their 16th-century defiance rendered startlingly contemporary. Cuscunà’s work is an explosive mix of history, politics, and handcrafted masks – a perfect example of puppetry’s ability to challenge, provoke, and reveal hidden truths. Her play closes the festival at Espace Magnan on 17 May as the culmination of a week where objects become arguments.

Credit: Marta Cuscunà

At the other end of the spectrum is Yeung Faï, one of the last masters of Chinese hand puppetry and a fine storyteller who blurs the line between craftsmanship and creation. He propels centuries of classic technique to modern life with remarkable elegance. His poetic solo piece Le Tigre et le Moine appears at the Musée des Arts Asiatiques, followed by a rare opportunity: a one-day workshop in traditional glove puppet technique at L’Entre-Pont on 14 May.

Credit: Yeung Faï

The six venues that FORMA threads itself through over the five-day festival are landmarks of the city’s cultural geography, from the medieval vaults of Salle des Franciscains to the sober Espace Magnan, from the baroque setting of the deconsecrated chapel de La Providence to the starkly industrial spaces of Le 109. These venues represent the vast stylistic variety and the multiple layers that puppetry offers. And the festival’s side programme is just as diverse and colourful as the settings

• Collectif Les En-jeux de la Marionnette launches the festival with another episode of its Apérodésastres series on 13 May at L’Entrepot (Le 109), where experiment and conversation collide over wine and strange creatures.

• Children are invited to their own initiation into puppet craft through Anima Théâtre’s Les Petites Mythologies, a series of intimate vignettes unfolding throughout 14 May.

• On May 14, Juliána Dubovská leads a workshop at Le 109 where participants can create their own characters from floating wood and other natural materials, then bring their creations to life through an introduction to the manipulation of puppets and group theatrical improvisation exercises.

• Alongside puppet performances on stage, films like Éric Bass’s Babylon, voyages de réfugiés and Katia Vonna Beltran’s live cinema piece Interstice expand the festival’s exploration of animated worlds.

• The festival is rounded out the way it began, with an Apérodésastres on May 17 at La Providence, the venerated Niçois cultural centre where director Frédéric Rey always welcomes puppets, masks, and wondrous objects from bygone days. (Heads-up for fans of the Festival Commedia dell’Arte: it will of course come back this year in June .)

Credit: Juliána Dubovská

Forma is not made for passive viewing; it rather invites visitors to become a part of the show. Far from a nostalgic retreat to childhood it sets a strong exclamation mark in an era when screens mediate nearly all experience. Across each performance and encounter, Forma puts craft and presence at its core. It reasserts the power of material transformation, the charged space where matter becomes metaphor, where wood and cloth capture something screens cannot convey. Here, puppets emerge as quiet insurgents against our virtual certainties, stitched from oldest materials yet speaking to contemporary anxieties.

This desire also goes hand in hand with an ambition for training and research in these disciplines. A puppet university will be set up as part of the programming of the Forma but also on an ongoing basis, throughout the year, by organising conferences, training courses, workshops and round tables. The aim of this university and its international presence is to encourage academic, professional and cultural exchanges, with the aim of continually enriching these disciplines and those who explore them.

Courtesy and © Théâtre de la Massue – Cie Ézéquiel Garcia-Romeu

Deep roots in Nice, with eyes firmly trained on the world

Born in Buenos Aires but at home in Nice for many years, Ézéquiel Garcia-Romeu has artistic blood flowing in his veins. His mission in life is to federate world-spanning art and to create universes. He is the founder (1985), artistic director and scenographer of Théâtre de la Massue, a contemporary puppet theatre company, based at Le 109, Nice’s Center of Contemporary Cultures. He also works in partnership with the Entre-Pont, which he has co-directed since 2012.

Garcia-Romeu explores contemporary forms of puppetry and new stage writing. His work is conceived as a paradigm within a creative theatrical laboratory. His shows have been programmed at leading theatres, festivals, and venues in France, Europe, and worldwide.

Photo: Courtesy and © Théâtre de la Massue – Cie Ézéquiel Garcia-Romeu

FORMA: Festival d’Objets Rares et de Marionnettes

Nice, 13–17 May 2025, various venues

Admission ranging from free to €35

Full programme: ezequiel-garcia-romeu.com/forma-programmation

Lead image credit Yeung Faï; all other photos as credited