Teatro de Títeres de El Retiro

LA NAVIDAD DEL TEATRO DE TÍTERES

Ritmos Animalescos

The Fàbrica de Paraules Company (Autonomous Community of Valencia)

23 December, 12:30pm

Recommended for children over 3 years of age

Duration: 55 minutes

Admission is free. Please download your free tickets from 10am on 21 December.

Animal Rhythms is a live concert, it’s oral tradition and love of words, it’s childhood

and family, it’s fun and games, it’s pure energy and the desire to laugh, dance and enjoy ourselves, while we remember our own childhood and share it with our children… and all this, with the puppet there on the stage. Animal Rhythms is also an appeal to our memory, a stimulus and a reminder that the rhymes and chants that we sang and recited will live on beyond our own time. What would happen if we brought together on stage a cow, five monkeys, a nit, a flea, a frog, ten puppies, three cats, a handful of mice, a spider, a fly, a mole, a lizard, and a few other beasties besides? Well then the theatre would be filled with Animal Rhythms!

El elefantito

La Canica Company (Madrid)

24 December, 12:30pm

Recommended for children over 3 years of age

Duration: 40 minutes

Admission is free. Please download your free tickets from 10am on 22 December.

A little elephant full of insatiable curiosity sets off on a journey through the jungle to find out what Mr. Crocodile has for his supper. Along the way, he meets animals of all kinds of different shapes, colours and fur, and he has lots and lots of questions for them. At the end of his journey he will come to understand that, in spite of all their differences, all the animals have something in common: the earth they live on, the air they breathe, the sun that shines on them, the sky that shelters them. Two performers tell and act out the story of the little elephant using a variety of objects, songs and other theatrical devices.

La oruga de colores

The Títeres sin cabeza Company (Aragon)

26 December, 12:30pm

Recommended for children over 3 years of age

Duration: 45 minutes

Admission is free. Please download your free tickets from 10am on 24 December.

The Colourful Caterpillar is the story of a little caterpillar who felt incredibly hungry when she hatched from her egg, so she asked herself, “What on earth am I going to eat today?” To reach the explosion of beauty that nature has to offer, the little caterpillar will have to eat and eat and eat, and it’s the kids in the house who are going to help our little heroine chomp her way through an apple, two pears, a few plums, strawberries... and so on, until she eats so much that she turns into a giant caterpillar that will soon form its own cocoon, before metamorphosing. The aim of this story is to introduce children to the magic of nature and the spectacle of the cycle of life, through the incredible story of the metamorphosis of a colourful caterpillar.

La isla de las cosas perdidas

La Tendía Company (Murcia)

27 December, 12:30pm

Recommended for children over 5 years of age

Duration: 50 minutes

Admission is free. Please download your free tickets from 10am on Monday 25 December.

Where do lost things go to? How do memories slip away? How does forgetting take away someone’s memories? This is the story of an island. Everything that Marcelo loses ends up washing up on its shores. One day, out of the blue, someone else turns up on the island: Estela, his granddaughter. She meets Olvido and chases him all around the island to try to recover one of her grandfather’s precious memories. The Island of Lost Things is a puppet show with marionettes made of esparto grass that talks about memory and its disappearance, about the sea and shipwrecks, about the past and the future.

Quacksalver

The Sofie Krog Company (Denmark)

28 December, 12 noon and 1pm

Recommended for children over 5 years of age

Duration: 30 minutes

Admission is free. Please download your free tickets from 10am on Monday 26 December.

Do you suffer from baldness? Have you become too wide around the waist? Is flatulence par for the course? Despair no more! The Quacksalver is here! From his squeaky pop-up wagon full of hidden compartments, this quack called Mr. Q will tell us all about the extraordinary benefits of his marvellous remedy, the Wonder Tonic. Believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, but this amazing elixir cures everything! Come and discover his secret... Join us, if you dare, and enjoy a hilarious show. A small show with a huge sound universe. Mr. Q deploys all his charm when he transforms his trolley with one subtle movement and takes the audience into a puppet universe where Wonder Tonic is revealed, produced and sold. A counter full of impossible surprises is transformed into a magical space where the characters, glove puppets that look like cartoons, will show the audience the incredible effects of this concoction. In these times, what could be better than a monstrous medicine for the whole family?

La ratita Martina y el ratón Antón

Deliri Teatro (Catalonia)

29 December, 12:30pm

Recommended for children over 3 years of age

Duration: 40 minutes

Admission is free. Please download your free tickets from 10am on 27 December.

Martina has found a coin. While she thinks about what to spend it on, she has lots of suitors lining up to win her heart. Will Martina find one with whom she has something in common? Show with actors and puppets, for family audiences. Adapted from the story The Little Rat Who Read on the Stairs (La ratita que leía en la escalera) by Vivim del cuento.

Feo!

The Caramuxo Company (Galicia)

30 December, 12:30pm

Recommended for children over 4 years of age

Duration: 45 minutes

Admission is free. Please download your free tickets from 10am on 28 December.

Caramuxo Teatro presents a show inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's “The Ugly Duckling”. Every day, the small rubber duck factory “Il Papero Giallo” produces hundreds and hundreds of ducks of the same size and colour, but one day a different duckling appears... Ugly! is a hymn to diversity and to the essence of oneself, a comedy to enjoy with

the family.

El gigante y la Navidad

The Sol y Tierra Puppet Company (Madrid)

31 December, 12:30pm

Recommended for children over 4 years of age

Duration: 50 minutes

Admission is free. Please download your free tickets from 10am on 29 December.

Every Christmas, two friends meet under a magical tree to tell the story of The Giant and Christmas and to exchange presents. They always tell the same story because it's so special: it's about a grumpy giant who falls out with his only friend and finds himself all alone. But what it is really all about is the light of friendship, of play, of celebration, which lives on even on the longest night of the year if we are kind and generous to those around us and open our hearts a little. It is also the story of some funny elves who love to sing and decorate trees on the winter solstice. The play is inspired by Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant.

Beto, una historia de Navidad

The Teatro Firulete Company (Madrid)

2 January, 12:30pm

Recommended for children over 3 years of age

Duration: 60 minutes

Admission is free. Please download your free tickets from 10am on 31 December.

There’s no bigger fan of Elvis Presley than Dante, the singing elephant. Imitating the voice and movements of the King of Rock, he will sing us the story of Beto, Lapland and Santa’s laziest but nicest elf, and the problems he has to overcome when the evil Rogelia and her twit of a sidekick, Pupi, try to put an end to Christmas by taking advantage of his kindness. A comedy that combines actors and puppets, live music, action and lots and lots of laughs. An invitation to fall in love with life all over again.

El sastrecillo valiente

The Hilando Títeres Company (Madrid)

3 January, 12:30pm

Recommended for children over 4 years of age

Duration: 55 minutes

Admission is free. Please download your free tickets from 10am on 1 January.

Seven flies were buzzing around a tailor, bothering him as he worked, so he decided to get rid of them right away, and he did. Just like that. Proud of what he had done, for it was no easy matter, he made himself a sash and embroidered the following words on it: “Seven at a stroke”. He decided that the world should know of his achievement so he tied the sash around his back and set off on a journey. On the way he met a giant who thought that the phrase referred to men, not flies. Although he shows him all due respect, the giant puts him to the test on several occasions but the brave little tailor emerges unscathed thanks to his ingenuity.

Retablillo de títeres y cuentos

The Rodorín Company (Madrid)

4 January, 12:30pm

Recommended for children over 3 years of age

Duration: 50 minutes

Free admission: please download your tickets in advance. From 2 December at 10am

A Tableau for Puppets and Fairy Tales is a collage of stories. Short stories taken from the oral tradition and from contemporary children's literature. All of them contain the important presence of the word as music: rhythms, rhymes, echoes, alliterations, ... This orality has its counterpoint in play; play with different elements related to the world of children: books, puppets and marionettes, toys and everyday objects that are manipulated in a figurative or symbolic way to become characters in the stories.

Caperucita roja

The Tropos, teatro de títeres Company (Madrid)

5 January, 12:30pm

Recommended for children over 3 years of age

Duration: 50 minutes

Admission is free. Please download your free tickets from 10am on 3 January.

Flop just loves making cakes and pies, but what she loves most is eating the biscuits her mother makes. One day, when she goes to pick one up, she finds a note. “I'm leaving these biscuits for your granny. They’re the chocolate ones you like so much. Don’t take any”. What! I can’t have one? But they’re so good! Flop only needs to be told not to do something to get an irresistible desire to do just that. She remembers a story her mother used to tell her when she was small and they were in the kitchen together. “Once upon a time, there was a little good who wasn’t particularly good, and she wasn’t particularly bad. She wasn’t particularly smart, and she wasn’t particularly dumb. She just couldn't stand still”. And thus begins this story of a little girl who couldn’t help doing the opposite of what she was told. Deep down, she was just like her mother and her grandmother. Because after all, who hasn’t been disobedient once or twice?