Filip Peeters

Filip Peeters graduated from the Karel de Grote Hogeschool Beeldende Kunst in Antwerp (1987). He has now been working as a freelance scenographer-doll maker and actor-puppeteer for almost 30 years.

His name is first and foremost linked to the puppet theatre company Ultima Thule, whose style, form and look he has helped define from the very beginning. The most notable productions are Het Paard van Troje, Negentienhonderd (nominated for the 1000Watt Prize in 2004), Zijde, Loop! and of course the GOMAARtrilogy.

Since 1997, Filip Peeters has worked at theatre FroeFroe on a very regular basis, mainly as an actor-puppeteer. More recently, he created and starred in Tropoi, Labyrint, de Soldaat en Diva.

In 2007, he befriended choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (Eastman) during the production process of Apocrifu (La Monnaie, Brussels). Since then, his puppets have travelled the world with him in Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's dance productions, including Apocrifu (La Monnaie, 2007), Origine (Toneelhuis, 2008), Southern Bound Comfort (Sadler's Wells London, 2010). Besides the puppets and masks, he also took on the scenography of Play (deSingel, 2010). In 2012, he designed the set of Puz/zle for Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, which had its world premiere at the Avignon festival the same year and received the prestigious Olivier Award in the Best New Dance Production category in London in 2014. In late 2018, he designed the set for the dance production Session (Eastman), which premiered in Rennes in February 2019.

In recent years, he worked as puppet maker/player and scenographer for the production Manneke tap at Kolonie MT, made a puppet for Fidelio by Walpurgis and made some 30 masks and several giant heads for Het gaat over, a co-production of deTijd, Lucas Vandervost and hetPaleis.
You can also regularly spot him as a puppeteer for film and television, especially on Ketnet, including in Bumba, De Grote Boze Wolf show and as the meerkat Frits of the duo Frits and Frats in Kaatjes tralalalaatjes.
Several theatre companies have already called on his expertise as a puppet coach.

He recently received the prestigious Boze Wolf prize from the hands of Tuur Devens for his entire oeuvre of puppets and more specifically for the performance of Odd, a puppet in the traditional Japanese Bunraku style designed for the show Kleine Held by Ultima Thule.

update January 2023