The Royal Theatre of Toone is a traditional puppet theatre that has been active since 1830. In this video, its director Nicolas Géal takes you behind the scenes of the theatre.
The video is in French with French subtitles. The transcript in English is available below the video:
Nicolas Géal: "I am the director of the Toone Theatre. There are 7 of us on stage, so there are 3 puppeteers on each side, and I sit there and do the voices.
It usually takes 2 to 3 months to get a puppet working properly, because you need to get the movement in the wrist right, and the weight of the body from one leg to the other.
The Toone Theatre was aimed at adults, because it was a working-class audience who couldn't afford to go to the big theatres, who couldn't read or write, and who therefore went to these neighbourhood theatres.
Here, for example, you have d'Artagnan, that's Woltje, the mascot of Toone's theatre, who has been around since the theatre was founded. He is a character who appears in all the plays and sometimes even plays the hero.
The sets are painted, we have 33 shows, so we have a lot of sets.
So come with me because you're going to see a whole stock of puppets. We have more or less 1,400 puppets, we have about 30 plays in our repertoire, with, you have to count, 30 to 35 puppets per show.
If you want to see more, come to Toone, and we're located right next to the Grand-Place in Brussels."
More info?
External siteRoyal Toone Theatre
Since the end of 2025, the Brussels' rod marionette tradition is inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity:
