Joan Miro's Puppet Show

For the first time in over 25 years the grotesque characters designed in 1978 by the surrealist painter Joan Miró (1893–1983) reappear in a new production for Tate Modern, as part of UBS Openings: The Long Weekend.

These puppets were originally designed for the show Mori el Merma, first performed in 1978, which emerged out of a collaboration between Miró and La Claca, an experimental theatre troupe from Barcelona, headed by Joan Baixas.

Mori el Merma roughly translates as ‘Death to the Bogeyman’, and the bogeyman is based on Alfred Jarry’s character Ubu, from his play Ubu Roi.

When it was first performed, the memory of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco was still fresh, and the performance alluded to his death in 1975.