About the Festival

Children are joy!

Our joy comes from creating theatre for children. This privilege comes with responsibility towards educating the future generation. As parents you share this commitment to creating a better place for our children to live in, a place where they receive the best education, have equal opportunities, and add splendor to the State of Israel. Our mission at the Train Theater is to bring creativity and the best creative arts to children, and to you, the parents. We have done this for 45 years at the theater, and for 35 years at the festival, bringing you the best!
This year, a legendary festival awaits us: in the outdoor complex "This is no dream" there will be short circus, movement theater, object theater, and music performances with legendary creativity. Artists from around Israel and abroad will present their best contemporary performances here in Jerusalem. We have added early evening performances especially suitable for teenagers, dealing with the complex reality of our lives. In the Davidson Theater, our home, there will be free outdoor plays and concerts every day by the dining area, the "Dalia Library" is open for you in the historic train carriage, and a beautiful exhibition awaits you in the foyer.

On the festival nights we will bring premieres for adults from the worlds of puppet theater, visual dance and contemporary circus together with the best local visual theater, and we will end every night with a free late night outdoor show in the fresh Jerusalem air.

This year, we are once again happy to be an island of sanity at the end of summer with quality culture for the whole family - toddlers, children, teenagers and adults, from Jerusalem and all over Israel. You are invited to join us for the 35th International Puppet Festival! We thank our partners, who help us bring all this to our children, who believe, like us, that children deserve more.

Kobi Frig, CEO, Shirly Marom, Artistic Director, and the entire staff of the festival and the Train Theater