Théâtre du Petit Miroir - Jean-Luc Penso Puppet Show

20 Jun 2025

The "Roman de Renart" (Fox Story)

Join us in the Department of Music, University College Cork on Saturday 5th July at  5.15pm for a puppet show that will delight both children and adults.

All welcome!

Location: Aloys Fleischmann Room, Department of Music, Sunday’s Well Road, Cork

Although entirely a creation, Fox Story "The Romance of Renart" is inspired by traditional Chinese shadow puppets, both in the making of the buffalo skin figurines and in the dramaturgical relationship between singing and dialogue.

Since its inception, "Le Roman de Renart" Fox Story has toured extensively in France. It has been invited to perform abroad in more than 40 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, Middle East and Oceania with the support of the cultural department of the French foreign office. Among the forty countries where this show has been presented, "Fox Story" has been performed in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and for Chinese communities in New Zealand, the Sultanate of Brunei, and the Samoan Islands.

Founded in 1978 by Jean-Luc Penso, the "Théâtre du Petit Miroir" made a reputation for itself as a Chinese Puppet Theatre. Jean-Luc Penso studied puppetry in Taipei with Master Li Tienlu, one of the last great puppeteers of the island, protagonist and lead player in the Taiwanese movie "The Puppet Master" by Hou Hsiao Hsien (winner of the Jury Prize at the 1993 Cannes Festival). Since its inception 50 years ago, more than 40 plays of puppets and shadows have been created and performed in 90 countries on five Continents. Theatre du Petit Miroir the first French puppet show invited to perform in China after the Cultural Revolution in April 1981. In 2007 Jean-Luc Penso received the Great Prize of the French Academia for moral and political sciences for his whole work. After studying shadow theater in Taiwan, the theater company Le Petit Miroir created several shadow puppet shows.