By Sarah Vigars

Date: Saturday 15th February 2025
Time: 3pm & 4pm (30 minutes)
Venue: Bear Bookshop

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 1+

Flying with Strings is a theatre collaboration between puppeteer Sarah Vigars and musician Louis Bingham. Join them for an intimate puppet show performance.

Inspired by the avian world of Britain, Europe and beyond, this interactive show features intricate string puppetry and live music. See the puppets in action and learn about the world of birds, including the graceful swallow, the charismatic hoopoe and the colourful bee-eater!

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By Freda O’Byrne, presented by Tragic Carpet

Date: Saturday 15th February 2025
Time: 2pm (30 minutes)
Venue: Smethwick Heritage Centre

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 3-5 years

Two children play on a beach, and when their parents call them away suddenly, Little Toy is left behind. A passing butterfly helps him find his way to the children’s new home across the sea, but first there is a sea monster to deal with…

A tiny show for 3-5 year olds and their adults.

By Freda O’Byrne, presented by Tragic Carpet

Date: Saturday 15th February 2025
Time: 4pm (30 minutes)
Venue: Smethwick Heritage Centre

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 6+

Inspired by the Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Ada is visited by a Raven and thrust into a dream world of quests, feathers and a Glass Mountain. The audience is taken on a tiny world adventure over an extraordinary, felted landscape as Ada unlocks the secret the Raven is trying to tell her.

For 6-to-9 year olds and their adults (also younger children in family groups).

By Sarah Vigars

Date: Sunday 16th February 2025
Time: 11am (30 minutes show + 45 minutes workshop)
Venue: Smethwick Library

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 1+

Flying with Strings is a theatre collaboration between puppeteer Sarah Vigars and musician Louis Bingham. Join them for an intimate puppet show performance and accompanying marionette making workshop.

Inspired by the avian world of Britain, Europe and beyond, this interactive show features intricate string puppetry and live music. See the puppets in action and learn about the world of birds, including the graceful swallow, the charismatic hoopoe and the colourful bee-eater!

Watch Trailer

By Strangeface

Date: Sunday 16th February 2025
Time: 11am-12pm / 1-2pm / 3-4pm
(15 minutes show, multiple time slots available)
Venue: West Smethwick Park Pavilion

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 2+

One table, one puppet, one big adventure!  Put on our headphones and enter a magical world. All Arnold wants is some peace , sun and sand, but his walk to the beach soon turns into a monstrous adventure!

Beached is a 15 minute show for all the family. Multiple time slots are available.

By Bori Mezo

Date: Monday 17th February 2025
Time: 3pm (30 minutes)
Venue: St Hilda’s Church

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 3+

Our story began 10 000 years ago, in an icy fjord of the northernmost island. Here, giants still roamed the land. The youngest of them played with pebbles on the beach. One was thrown too far, a powerful sea troll woke, a gigantic wave rose… And Bjorna was gone. Time passed, miners moved to the fjord. The mining started. Digging and drilling, deeper and deeper, until - with an ear-splitting boom, an earth-splitting quake! Something truly unexpected emerged from the hill!

A storytelling puppet show in a suitcase about our relationship to nature, friendship and places we call home.

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By Swallow’s Wings Puppetry

Date: Tuesday 18th February 2025
Time: 2pm (50 minutes)
Venue: Smethwick Library

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 4+

A funny, inspiring & entertaining West African tale mixing puppetry & traditional West African Music.

One day Darkness covers the face of the Land. Lion appeals for someone to bring back the Light and save the World. Who will succeed? The Powerful Eagle? The Clever Monkey? or Anansi the Spider and his mates? The Anansi Stories are part of our multicultural heritage, yet have a universal appeal to all people in modern Britain.

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By Lori Hopkins

Date: Wednesday 19th February 2025
Time: 11am, 2:30pm (35 minutes)
Venue: Lightwoods House

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 3+

Nutcracker in Spring is a fresh new interpretation of the well-loved festive tale, reimagined for Spring and Summertime. Lori Hopkins fuses her unique blend of storytelling and intricate puppetry to take family audiences on a journey into young Clara's world on the day of her birthday.

Clara receives an unusual gift from her odd relative - a handmade, funny-looking nutcracker. Overnight the nutcracker transforms into a Prince and Clara finds herself catapulted into a world of magic, sweets and sunshine!

The show features ballet-dancing puppets, a sinister Mouse King, an abundance of flowers and plenty more surprises.

By Goofus Theatre

Date: Thursday 20th February 2025
Time: 3:30pm (40 minutes)
Venue: Brushstrokes Community Project

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 5+

Imaginative, wordless storytelling, skilful puppetry and classic clowning combine to delight audiences of all ages this wintertime.

Come with us on a fantastical, wintery journey, led by three clowns (Boz, Yolo and Flo) who travel wherever their magical, map-of-dreams leads them! Join them on their epic adventure across land, sea and skies to help a lone puppet, find the most important thing – ever… their own red nose!

Celebrating the art of puppetry, red-noses and snowball fights! This accessible, fun-filled production promises to warm the heart whilst making you laugh out loud. We invite you to join us and rediscover your childlike wonder in this delightful, non-verbal show for everybody.

Sometimes, you just need to follow your nose…

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By The Object Project

Date: Friday 21st February 2025
Time: 7:30pm (60 minutes)
Venue: Thimblemill Library

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 16+

A breathless exploration of the day to day, angst-ridden experiences of loving, living, lying and dying, told entirely using household objects! 

Have you ever woken in the middle of the night in a feverish torment, questioning your life choices, other people’s life choices, and the sheer pointlessness of it all? Well, you shall sleep soundly from this day forth. The Object Project are on a mission to interrogate, unpack and dissect the very fabric of existence and lay it before you in simple, often hilarious vignettes, enacted by a miscellany of beleaguered kitchen paraphernalia… mostly. 

The company that may or may not have traumatised you with PIXIEMATOSIS returns with the world premiere of their most objectionable show yet. Beware, all is not what it seems… 

By Grandly Strange Puppet Theatre

Date: Saturday 22nd February 2025
Time: 11am & 2pm (45 minutes)
Venue: Dorothy Parkes Centre

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 3+

tiny clown loves teetering on a wire high above a cage of ferocious kiwi fruit, but maybe it's time for a change of scenery? Why not jump into a book, tiny clown? Literally! tiny clown's BIG adventure is exactly that! It's about discovery and imagination. It's also very silly, a teeny bit naughty and has the best monster made out of a lampshade that you will ever see in your entire life! Probably.

Warning! This show contains Jabberwock poo !

Watch Trailer

With Lori Hopkins

Date: Sunday 16th February 2025
Time: 11am-12pm, 1-2pm, 3-4pm (drop-in sessions)
Venue: West Smethwick Park Pavilion

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 3+

Make your own fish puppet with Lori Hopkins before or after watching a performance of ‘Beached’!

Drop in during any of the time slots.

With Hopeful Monster Theatre

Date: Tuesday 18th February 2025
Time: 11am-1pm (drop-in sessions)
Venue: Bearwood Community Hub at Bearwood Baptist Church Hall

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 5+

Join us for a drop-in workshop to create a cardboard toy theatre!

Inspired by the popular Victorian home entertainment, we'll choose a story to adapt to our small stage. We'll use collage, drawing and painting to design and decorate a proscenium, backdrops, props and characters and conclude with an opportunity for a 'show & tell'!

Drop in anytime from 11am - 1pm.

With Judith Hope

Date: Saturday 22nd February 2025
Time: 10am, 11am, 12pm, 2pm & 3pm (45 minutes)
Venue: Smethwick Library

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 3+

Have lots of fun creating your very own jointed Fancy Fish puppet!

Join us for some drawing, sticking, folding and cutting. Design and add beautiful decorations, then take your fish for a swishy swim around!

 A family workshop suitable for ages 3+.

With Sarah Vigars, Marc Parrett and Lori Hopkins

Date: Saturday 15th February 2025
Time: 6:30pm
Venue: Thimblemill Library

Admission fee: Free
Age rating: 5+

Join us to celebrate the opening of Smethwick Puppetry Festival 2025! We’ll be joined by Sarah Vigars of ‘Flying With Strings’, Marc Parrett of The Object Project and Grandly Strange Puppet Theatre and local puppeteer Lori Hopkins to talk about their work and answer questions from the audience. There will then be the opportunity to get a first look at our automata exhibition installed at Thimblemill Library.

With Hopeful Monster Theatre and Swallow’s Wings Puppetry

Date: Monday 17th February 2025
Time: 6:30pm
Venue: Thimblemill Library

Admission fee: Free
Age rating: 5+

Join Hopeful Monster Theatre and Swallow’s Wings Puppetry for a Q&A session. An opportunity to hear more about their work and ask all your behind-the-scenes questions!