Kövér Béla Puppet Theater to premiere six new shows in 2025–2026 season

Kövér Béla Puppet Theater will launch its new season with six premieres, including a puppet opera, director Ágnes Kiss announced Tuesday ahead of the theater’s company season-opening meeting.

As in previous years, the company marked the start of the season by cleaning up a Szeged playground – this time choosing the playground at Roosevelt Square.

The season opens September 27 with Költögető, a production for elementary school children directed by Jankó Schneider and featuring musical adaptations of poems by Sándor Kányádi.

At the end of November, the theater will present Csipkerózsika, an opera by Ádám Brandenburg and Zsuzsa Hajós with music recorded by the Szeged Symphony Orchestra under conductor Gergely Dubóczky. The roles will be sung by four puppeteers with strong vocal abilities. The production combines shadow play, puppetry and live acting, and is planned to tour Hungary next year with live orchestral accompaniment.

The spring schedule includes Lóri fantáziavilágban in early February, Fityfirity for the youngest audiences from March 21, and A rókaszemű menyecske, a one-woman show based on a Kalotaszeg folktale, at the end of March. The season closes in mid-May with Bolyongó, aimed at elementary school children and directed by Tamás Somogyi.

Eleven popular productions from previous seasons will also return, including The Big Snowball Project, which turns the studio stage into a snowy landscape, and The Pied Piper Project, based on the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The latter, directed by Péter Varsányi, will now be staged regularly after appearing only at a workshop performance and two festivals.

The theater will also revive audience favorites such as Jankó Schneider’s Egy kupac kufli and Rózsa Sándor tréfája, which will be performed across Hungary as part of the Lázár Ervin Program and in Slovakia and Transylvania with support from the Határtalanul Program.

Kiss, who has just begun her second five-year term as director, said her priority for the coming years is to continue building the ensemble and bring productions to more audiences, including venues in Western Europe.

This article is based on the handout of the Hungarian News Agency

Featured image: From the press rehearsal of The Pied Piper Project. Szegedify / Szilvia Molnár