Ei! Marionetas / Teatro e Marionetas de Mandrágora

Ei! Marionetas - Encontro Internacional de Marionetas de Gondomar 2025

Tribute to Delphim Miranda [ OPENING CEREMONY ]

• Teatro e Marionetas de Mandrágora
• all audiences . 15mins . free access

Tribute to Delphim Miranda

Delphim Miranda believes that puppets have the ability to interact with various technologies and integrate harmoniously with other artistic languages. For the artist, this art form is not only versatile, but also offers a meaningful channel for conveying messages and telling stories captivatingly.

what the festival has to say

DELPHIM MIRANDA was born in Lisbon in 1947. He attended the Painting Course at the Lisbon School of Fine Arts and taught Visual Education and Visual and Technological Education in the public school system. After experimenting with various forms of communication, such as cartoons, comic books, animated films, painting, illustration, and performance/intervention, he settled on theatre, working in the areas of set design, costumes, props, as an actor, and as an author.

Discovering puppetry in teaching as a way of engaging students in all areas of expression, he specialized in this art form and became a professional. He then created his first shows, in which he performed with his puppets, telling stories of his own creation.

He travelled the country as a storyteller with puppets, also participating in national and international theatre festivals. He joined the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation's Reading Support Program, presenting his shows and providing training to teachers and entertainers in the expressive arts. Over the years, the artist has always been deeply involved in the development of puppetry in Portugal, where he has developed a set of objects, very particular animated forms, marking his presence in national cultural dynamics.

It is essential to recognize that the artist has pointed out unique aesthetic paths that today allow us to understand his deep involvement with puppetry, contributing to its development in recent decades. Thus, this tribute is above all a look at the work of an artist who, over time, has been guided by an aesthetic but also by a social approach that allows us to understand not only the work but also the thinking behind the pieces of the cultural dynamics of the relationship between the art of puppetry and teaching.

Teatro e Marionetas de Mandrágora

Teatro e Marionetas de Mandrágora is a professional puppet theater company with artistic direction by Clara Ribeiro and Filipa Mesquita and art direction by enVide neFelibata. The company was founded on April 2, 2002. In the symbiosis of a symbolic language that combines heritage and traditional legacy with contemporary society's thought and dynamics, often in a not-so-peaceful dialogue, a fundamental element emerges: the puppet. This element supports us in the search for our own cultural identity.

Our goal is to discover the aesthetic, visual, scenic, and dramatic potential of the puppet itself, as well as in its relationship with the actor, and in this discovery, explore the dramaturgy that characterizes us: to explore culture, belief, and legend allied with the city, technological exploration, and the speed of the global village. Throughout our artistic journey, we have presented various proposals to different audiences, including adults, youth, school, and family groups, as well as in basic and specialized training. One of our major commitments is the national and international tour of our projects. Decentralization, community work, partnership creation, and social and inclusive value are predominant concerns in our daily activities.

Over these 22 years, we have established the company as a contemporary artistic creation structure through dozens of show proposals presented nationally and internationally, whether they are our own creations or collaborations with other national and international cultural structures and entities. Our premise is to provide space for the creative freedom of our artistic team, ensuring the existence within the structure of various languages and diverse visions that unite in the common goal of developing the art of puppet theater. Reflection on social fragility issues and a keen eye on traditions and heritage form the basis of the Company's dramaturgy, consolidated in distinct yet simultaneously convergent perspectives.

Dialogue with diverse audiences and the involvement of creation in different contexts and spaces, as well as the intersection between entities and structures, is fundamental, creating multidisciplinary proposals aimed mainly at artistic communication with audiences. Noteworthy is our collaboration with numerous educational services in the implementation of activities in institutions such as monuments, museums, and heritage buildings.

links

• ei.marionetasmandragora.pt
• loja.marionetasmandragora.pt
• marionetasmandragora.pt
• facebook.com/marionetas.mandragora
• instagram.com/marionetas_mandragora
• youtube.com/@MarionetasMandragora

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that's how

Celebrating artists, their work developed over the years, remembering their creations, their artistic journey, and the person themselves. This is how Ei! decided to celebrate Delphim Miranda, whom we have followed and admired for many years as a person, artist, and companion on many journeys. As the artistic director of Encontro said: it is essential to celebrate people while they are alive, to honor their work and their journey.

It was a touching moment, in the company of several artists and a large audience, where we were able to see the work developed in a short video celebrating some historical moments in his career, as well as current images collected in Lisbon by the Mandrágora team. We were thus in the presence of this unavoidable figure in the art of puppetry, and some words dedicated to this gesture of homage were recorded.

We invited the artist Miguel Tepes to create an object, which we have already had the opportunity to talk and write about. It was handed over to our colleague, also a puppeteer, Fernando Cunha, who kindly delivered it to Delphim, who kindly sent us a few words of thanks.

We are grateful that there are passionate artists who devote themselves heart and soul to the development of an art form that we consider to be a major art form, the art of puppetry. We leave here some records so that, like us, you may be touched by a gesture that deserves to be amplified and replicated, because the paths, so difficult to trace, are often consistent with the greatness of the individual.