They’ve become nationally and internationally acclaimed for their intricately detailed and human-like puppets made of carved wood and silicone and performances accompanied by live orchestral music. They have innovated and adapted their shows for huge audiences by using ultra-violet lights to make the puppets more visible in huge sold-out performances in auditoriums like Manuel de Fallas that traditionally were thought inadequate for puppet theatre.
The tale of success of Granada’s Etcétera Puppet Theatre Company began with a twelve year old boy discovering his grandfather’s hand-carved puppet in a room in his parents’ house in Granada. Enrique Lanz’s keen interest in the craftsmanship of the wooden puppet and in his grandfather’s profession and past inspired him to found Etcétera a few years later in 1981 with Fabiola Garrido. To this day the puppet company still exists and thrives as one of the great reference points in the world of puppetry in Spain.
To mark their 40 years of success, the Palacio de Congresos y Exposiciones in Granada held a series of performances of Etcétera’s 'Soñando el festival de los animales’ from the 25th to the 28th of December 2021, a show coproduced in 2004 with the well-known Teatro de Liceo in Barcelona.
The puppet company has certainly moved around Granada. It started in the Casa de los Migueletes, in the lower Albaicín, later it moved to a large warehouse in the Vega of Granada and finally settled in Güéjar Sierra where it still remains to this day.
Their very first production, called ‘Sypnosis’, came about in 1985 and remained their star act for fourteen years. Interestingly enough, the name came about when a friend of Enrique’s, writer Antonio Muñoz Molina, suggested the title while enjoying an ice-cream together at Los Italianos, an adored ice-cream parlour and another age-old company that also continues to flourish today.
Since then the company has produced a total of fourteen productions, the most successful of them being 'Pedro y el lobo’ (Pedro and the wolf), which has been performed a grand total of 3000 times. Pedro and the wolf combines dramatic moments, humour and orchestral music adapted to a clever yet simple story to capture the attention of young children. In 2014 it won the National Theatre Award for Children and Youth.
Every one of the beautifully-crafted puppets, brought to life by the experienced team of puppeteers that travel with Etcétera all around the world, is dreamt up and handmade by Enrique Lanz in his workshop in Güéjar Sierra. Enrique says that the process, from sketching to completing a puppet, can take up to three years and sometimes he spends twenty-four hours a day there. He still carves the wood by hand and does all the repairs himself.
But with all these accomplishments behind them, Enrique Lanz and Yanisbel Victoria Martínez (director of productions) won’t stop there. Moving forward, they are embarking on a number of projects to take place in Güéjar Sierra. The company's next big project is the creation of a technical training centre, for which they have already received the backing of European funds for the development of rural areas. Another of their projects is ‘the Secret Cave’, puppet theatre performances which they put on in the forest to combine nature, art and gastronomy for family audiences.
Below is a link to their website where you will find information about their next events, their history, all of their productions and their new projects that hope to bring spectators closer and into direct contact with the company in a way that wasn’t done before.