KOLK 17 Mission Statement

KOLK 17 strives for entertainment of the highest standard – for everyone. 

KOLK 17 offers events for a diverse audience. The productions, differing in form between Puppet, figure and object theatre are based on a creative visual and artistic animation process. They examine traditions and current social issues. KOLK 17 is a versatile place of creative and cultural education that enchants its visitors in both exhibitions and performances.

KOLK 17 stands for openness and diversity.

KOLK 17 works transparently across cultural divides and between disciplines. The diversity of puppet theatre can be experienced through the various exhibitions and performances also at times given by international guest ensembles. It is important for us to be able to accommodate the needs of society by making ourselves accessible for all people: barrier-free, with offers especially for children and for various age groups.

KOLK 17 Puppet Theatre & Museum

History of the buildings

Lübeck’s Kolk in the middle of the Old Town is home to a chequered history of puppet theatre. Fritz Fey Sr. opened a puppet theatre here in 1977, which entertained its audience with plays for children and adults for 30 years. This era came to an end in 2006. In 2007, the Puppet Theatre in Lübeck was founded as a modern theatre venue catering to guest performers for all forms of puppet, mask and object theatre. Together with its permanent cooperation partner: the ensemble of KOBALT Puppet Theatre Lübeck, it developed a wide-ranging programme for children and adults, theatre education programmes and an international festival held every two years. This has resulted in one of the most important institutions for theatre of this form in Germany. A special feature has always been the proximity to the museum: as early as 1982, the Puppet Theatre Museum was founded in the immediate vicinity with a floor space of 500 square metres as a private collector’s museum by Fritz Fey jun. Due to its unique collection of approximately 20,000 puppets, objects, instruments and graphics on the subject of puppet theatre, it has a special position, both within the Lübeck museum landscape and indeed throughout Germany. It is one of the few museums internationally to deal singularly with the theme of puppet theatre.

In early 2021, both institutions merged under the umbrella title KOLK 17 Puppet Theatre & Museum.

The Challenge of the Theatre Puppet

Handcraft, dramaturgy and future

Puppet theatre productions are a multi-layered, dramatic combination of design elements, animation processes and physically specific performing arts. All these aspects are based on handcraft traditions dating back centuries, which continue to provide lasting inspiration for today’s puppeteers. How do you build a theatre puppet able to be seen from the last row, How is it constructed, How do you animate a large and heavy puppet or a small, light or even translucent puppet, How does one be ‘in the moment’, How do you establish eye contact, how do you grab the audience, lead their emotions, their perception? Here one finds many stimulating ideas in the collection when rehearsing, searching and creating, or when collaborating on performance based exhibition concepts. The production then creatively builds up the relationship to the present and reality using today’s other theatrical means, e.g. digital media.

From “Colonialism and Puppet Theatre. Untangeling The Threads”

The thing in the showcase

The certain something of the theatrical moment cannot be detected by breaking down puppet theatre into its individual parts, in playing technique, puppets, stage sets, play texts. It lies in between and remains fleeting, bound to the moment of performance – therefore immaterial. All attempts to research and write about it must necessarily remain approximations.

Much of culture is immaterial. The museum as an institution has always had to try to bridge this gap by focusing on objects, even more so by necessarily making everything into objects. We find a good symbol of this process of objectification in the showcase. It is (still) at the core of our idea of the museum: ‘Museum = (dead) objects in showcases’. This includes the object sign. It testifies to the idea of unambiguous identification and classification in the sense of (natural) scientific classifications. The unambiguous classification of the object is noted on it.