TEHRAN -- The 21st Tehran-Mobarak International Puppet Theatre Festival has opened at the Cinematheque of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, with a program focused on puppetry as a language for addressing war, peace and the dreams of children.
The opening ceremony on Friday featured a remote presentation by Peter Schumann, founder of the U.S.-based Bread and Puppet Theater. 
Poupak Azimpour, the festival’s secretary, said Schumann—whose work she has studied and collaborated on for more than two decades—had created two puppet film-theatre works specifically for the festival. 
The works were dedicated to children at the Shajareh Taybeh school in Minab, southern Iran, and to journalists killed in Gaza. Both were screened during the ceremony.
John Bell, a longtime member of Bread and Puppet and a theatre historian, also joined the event online. Bell, who has worked with the company since 1974, described the troupe as one of the most innovative puppet-theatre groups of the past six decades.
Founded by Schumann in 1963, Bread and Puppet Theater is known for combining puppetry with political and social themes. Bell said Schumann’s experience of displacement during the Second World War, when his family became refugees, informed his continuing engagement with war, death and human suffering.
Bell also discussed the importance of bread in Schumann’s practice. The company has traditionally distributed bread to audiences after performances, reflecting Schumann’s belief that art should be accessible and affordable. For the artist, Bell said, art is comparable to food: it cannot literally be eaten, but it can nourish an audience.
The opening program also included a performance by the Iranian music group Parvaz, featuring traditional senj and dammam percussion.
Theatre researcher Hamidreza Ardalan, speaking at the ceremony, described Schumann’s work as deceptively simple, stating that its apparent simplicity allows it to address fundamental questions about contemporary life. For Schumann, Ardalan said, war should not be regarded as an inevitable or “obvious” condition.
Azimpour later presented the festival’s statement, emphasizing peace, empathy and hope. She said the festival aims to bring artists, researchers and theatre groups from Iran and other countries together through puppetry, which she described not merely as entertainment but as a means of communication between people.
This year’s program places particular emphasis on “Minab’s Book of Dreams”, a theme centered on life, peace and the unfinished dreams of
 children. The festival will give special attention to works that use poetic and symbolic approaches to explore war and the capacity of puppetry to address trauma, speak about truth and evoke peace.
Alongside performances, the festival has planned workshops and online seminars intended to strengthen theoretical and practical approaches to puppet theatre and make them accessible to practitioners beyond Tehran.
The opening concluded with the unveiling of the festival poster, designed by Iranian graphic artist Farzad Adibi.