Warendorf Paper Theater Festival

In the mid-19th century, paper theater developed as a bourgeois artform, occupying a space somewhere between a children’s plaything and a more sophisticated form of domestic entertainment. On miniature stages, performances could range from fairytales to opera to drama. After the world wars, paper theaters – complete with figurines and decorative paper backdrops featuring lithographic prints – lost popularity as a living artform, but increasingly became collectors’ items.

Just over thirty years ago, a small group of passionate paper theater players got together in Preetz, near Kiel, in Schleswig-Holstein, to share their love of this unique artform with live audiences. Over time, this became the international paper theater convention, a three-day event that takes place every year in September across a number of stages and attracts spectators from all over the world. Inspired by the great role model of Preetz, the idea for a paper theater festival in Warendorf was born. In 2019, the successful paper theater event featured as part of the self-organized "WarendorferWeihnachtsPlätzchen" and, supported by the Cultural Office, has helped to popularize and anchor the West Prussian State Museum as a valued cultural institution in Warendorf. In this way, the Cultural Office and the museum became official cooperation partners and sponsors of the first paper theater festival in Warendorf.