Mar ~ Marionetas | Espinho International Puppet Festival

Mar~Marionetas - Festival Internacional de Marionetas de Espinho 2025

Mário and Neta [ PERFORMANCE ]

• Divisão Municipal de Património e Promoção Cultural < Espinho
• all audiences . free access

Mário and Neta

Mário and Neta, Mar~Marionetas' mascots, are well known to our audiences. They walk around schools, go to the capital, travel by train and stroll the city streets.

The constant attempt to find new ways of bringing Mar~Marionetas closer to its audiences gave rise to the idea of splitting the word puppet and creating two characters — Mário and Neta — who, through various means and ways, would increase the effectiveness of the Festival's promotion and affirm it as an event aimed at all ages.

It has been seen that the mascots establish a relationship of great empathy and complicity with both schoolchildren and the general public. It can be considered that the mascots, who are well known by the public, are an excellent way of promoting Mar~Marionetas and attracting new audiences.

what the festival has to say

The Festival's key figures are present at various venues and initiatives.

A play on the Portuguese word “marioneta”, puppetry, deconstructed in Grandpa Mário, who visits the Festival in the company of his granddaughter (Neta). A metaphor we cherish.

These mascots symbolize the intention to unite the whole family, between different generations, offering this beautiful image in what is a Festival for everyone and that unites everyone.

No one is indifferent to them, their visual appearance, their endearing air and the puppet's kind empathy with the audience, which extends its sweetness as an appeal to socializing together, to smiling, to dreaming and also to the materialization of these figures that are nothing more than beautiful ideas put into motion, by the hands and bodies of a team dedicated to enchantment, to the dreamy gazes of those who consider that the puppet is art but also a uniting factor.

art

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