Henrique Delgado Award

The Henrique Delgado Cultural Merit Award aims to give recognition to personalities, companies or institutions that have developed a decisive work for the recognition of the puppetry arts, contributing to their knowledge, improvement and visibility, including its more comprehensive character in its interdisciplinary relationship with other universes of artistic creation, such as cinema, the visual arts, dance, numerical art or theatre.

Henrique Delgado (1938-1971) is a unique case in the history of Puppet Theatre in Portugal. His research was extremely important and vital to the study and knowledge of this art, a true reference, without his work a lot of information about the Portuguese puppetry would be lost forever. His work was published in several national and international magazines and newspapers,  Unfortunately, his untimely death prevented the continuation of this work.

The Henrique Delgado Award is biannual and aims to:
-To honor a personality, company or institution that has distinguished itself in the scope of the puppetry arts, in the fields of rechearch, writing, creation or theatre criticism;
-To distinguish a publication that for its content brought a new approach to puppetry and animated forms; or a historical research work.

This initiative allows the promotion and encouragement of research and dissemination of the puppetry arts, enabling the winners to publish a bilingual publication (Portuguese-English) or support a researching project.

The Henrique Delgado Award 2019 was given to João Carneiro, journalist and theatre critic of the newspaper Expresso.
The award ceremony for the first edition of the Prize took place on March 21st, World Puppetry Day, at São Luiz Teatro Municipal  (to know more).