Childrens’ games. War games. Puppets. Moppets. Old and beautiful things. To be broken in two by sword swings. Underneath: bodies, metal, love and war. Above: wires, loud voices and a tragic destiny.
Charlemagne and his paladins. When I was a boy I hated those characters, prototypes of conquerors. Whereas, I loved their portrayal of death tenderly, those marionettes broken into hundred pieces, tied to a torn
paper sky. Twenty years later, when I see men and/or puppets die in battle fields, I understand that everybody deserves compassion and their corpses must be respected. The tragic- and comic story of Charlemagne’s paladins – from Angelique’s arrival at court to the massacre at Roncesvalles – tells the beauty and cruelty of life. If great poets and obscure theatre-goers still have pleasure in telling this story even after more than five hundred years, there must be a reason. It seems to be in the small puppet theatre where the great director and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini led some of the most important Italian actors of the Sixties (Totò, Ninetto Davoli, Franco e Ciccio) telling the story of Otello, Iago and Desdemona. With these puppets I would like to recount Rinaldo, Astolfo, Angelica, Bradamante, Fiordiligi, Orlando and the massacre in Roncesvalles at the end, that weird and bloody dump in which all those bodies died and lied abandoned, looking at the sky and asking themselves “What are clouds?”
Francesco Niccolini

Prize as Best Performance – Eolo Awards 2009
Prize as Best Performance – The Critics’ Choice Award 2009
Special prize of the Jury as Best Performance for supporting and developing the traditions
The Great Petrushka, International Puppet Festival 2014 – Ekaterinburg (Russia)
Prize as Best Director Harmony Word puppet Carnival 2014 – Bangkok (Thailand)
Jury of Audience International Prize Il Teatro Nudo di Teresa Pomodoro – Milan (Italy)