http://www.ultima-thule.be

Ultima Thule is a theatre company with its headquarters in Ghent whose main activity is ‘figure’ or puppet theatre. Its productions always test the boundaries of the puppet theatre medium and are a crossover between several arts disciplines.

Ultima Thule makes theatre for both young people and adults: the company invites the young and the not-so-young to be moved by the simplicity, the magic and the poetry of the interplay between people and puppets. Ultima Thule doesn’t necessarily choose adaptations of existing plays or classics, but opts for stories that stimulate the imagination.

In Ultima Thule’s productions, actors make use of puppets, objects, odds and ends, projection, music, even artworks if necessary, and also of themselves as the key player. This means that the focus is on the search for evocativeness and on creating an illusion that reflects recognisable reality without necessarily being realistic itself.

At the helm of Ultima Thule are its founder Joris Joseph and artistic director Wim De Wulf. The company operates with a semi-permanent team that regularly works on new projects. In the coming years this collaboration will be cemented in two ways. Firstly, permanent team members will be given the chance to develop further and to set up their own projects. Secondly, new blood is always refreshing: and in this sense the doors are always open. People who regularly collaborate with Ultima Thule include Sven Ronsijn, Filip Peeters, Koen De Ruyck, Dominique Collet, Els Trio, Hans Van Cauwenberghe, Chris Snik, Gert Dupont, Guido Schieffer, Yves Meerschaert, Nils De Caster, John Snauwaert and Bart Maris.

Ultima Thule has chosen puppet theatre because the genre goes back to the very roots of theatre. Storytelling, combined with visuals and their manipulation. It is theatre that uses the simplest means of telling a story. Ultima Thule’s productions are not meant to be a reflection of reality, but to create an illusion. In this sense, this form of theatre has something inherently subversive about it, because it is so resolutely different from the excesses of technology that surround us in the media, music, theatre and cinema.

Ultima Thule confronts young people with an alternative way of telling a story to an audience, which makes this theatrical project valuable in an educational context.