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In 2004, Soile Mäkelä, Laura Mäkelä, and Davide Giovanzana met in Padova, Italy while working with Donato Sartori. From this meeting they decided to create a theatre company in Finland that would focus on three areas: physical theatre as a celebration of the body, exploration of the mysterious apparatus that is at the origin of theatre: the mask and to continue the pedagogical and theatrical research initiated by Jacques Lecoq. And, so Teatteri Metamorfoosi was born.

Teatteri Metamorfoosi borrows its name from Ovid’s Metamorphosis, “Nothing keeps its own appearance, and Nature, the renewer of all things, continually changes every form into some other shape. Nothing dies, but everything varies.”

Teatteri Metamorfoosi in its early phase was characterized by productions that blended education, research, and theoretical exploration. Every summer a retried in the Finnish forest dedicated to produce and explore new masks was organized. And for each performance, an international pedagogue was invited to present a specific technique that was then used in the show (Lost Persons Area 2006, Kalevala Dell’Arte 2007, Pirandello Project -On the Edge of Silence 2009, The Sauna 2011, Diiva and the Mechanical Heart 2012, Femme Fatale & The General Theory of Love 2013, Pulcinella, Maccus, Bucco and Kukko 2015,  MetaCLOWNS -solos 2017, Hells Fangels 2017 and Dark Matters 2019).

From 2007 until 2015 Teatteri Metamorfoosi organized MasQue, an international mask theatre festival at Stoa, Helsinki. This festival brought to Helsinki more than 40 theatre companies working with masks. 

The work of the company can be perceived as a journey that metamorphosed itself relentlessly.

When the Metamorfoosi started, commedia dell’arte and full masks were strong denominators of the company (2006-2012). After that, the work of the company was strongly marked by puppetry and object theatre (2009-2015). It followed intense research on the clown (2013-2017) which lead to a multitude of clown shows. The clown period was followed by the bouffon (2015-2019). At the moment, the company initiated a new journey that examines social issues.