The People and Dolls Puppet Theatre Company was founded in 1995 by a theatre director Valentina Kartashova. The original theatre troupe was formed from the best graduates of the Minsk College for the Arts, in which Ms. Kartashova has taught such disciplines as actor's skills and stage performance direction since 1976. The theatre serves as a creative laboratory for the young and talented actors and directors, as well as the quintessence of the quest for the innovative in the puppet theatre world translated into performances for the mass audiences. For the furthering of their skills improvement, the actors of the theatre continued their education at the St. Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy, where they studied the best examples of work of the world's leading theatres, mastered them to introduce the spectators of all ages to a great variety of expressive means available to the puppet theatre.
Using its unique professional venue, the theatre had developed several stage pieces which were designed as a form of a journey into the art of puppetry, as the shows employing a wide variety of puppet types and demonstrating unusual methods and techniques of working with popular types of puppets. This project was initially introduced at the Festival of the European Art in Kuwait which ran from December, 2001 through March, 2002, organized by Creative Child Co. During those months, the theatre gave performances to the audiences of all ages and walks of life, including school students from different countries who studied in Kuwait. Theatre experts gave high grades to the theatre's originality and uniqueness, which naturally helped the troupe in getting offers and work opportunities. Thanks to the absence of dialogues in the theatre's performances, they are understood by the audiences of any nationality and culture, since they are human and international in their content and original in their form. In February, 2003, the theatre's unique nature received recognition at the Puppet Mania International festival in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 2006 the theatre gave shows in Pori, Finland, which included performances of actors with disabilities who received a very warm reception from the Finnish spectators. In July - August, 2007, the theatre toured several cities in China. In 2008, the troupe participated in the Fifth Chir Chayan Eco-Ethnic Festival of Puppet Theatres in the South Siberian city of Abakan, where once again, the theatre's uniqueness and originality received solid recognition from the best puppet theatre experts. Since 1995, the theatre has performed on the most popular stages of Belorussian capital Minsk, as well as it has frequently toured other cities in the country.
In recent years, the People and Dolls has received many offers to perform on stage in theatres in Russia. Since February of 2008, the theatre's official name is The People and Dolls Puppet Theatre, LLC, with the legal address in Novosibirsk, Russia, Having had the opportunity to work on a permanent stage, the theatre has continued to master new theatrical forms, and since then has released several new performances which successfully ran in Novosibirsk and other cities in Russia. The theatre continues to provide support to all puppet theatre companies that strive in excelling the art of puppetry by giving consultations and holding practice seminars in theatres, schools, and colleges.
In 2004 Valentina Kartashova has visited the USA for the first time to get acquainted with the art of puppet theatre in America. As a result, Ms. Kartashova collaborated with the Stanislavsky Theatre Studio in Washington, D.C, by sharing her ideas and directoral expertise. Following this, the Studio has invited her as a volunteer consultant to participate in the production of the play, named The Wonderful Shoemaker. The production has received highest credits from the Studio's management and the Catholic University of America, who co-sponsored the production.
The idea to present The People and Dolls, this unusual and unique theatre, to the American audiences was born.
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