The NISTA puppet theatre company was founded in 2007 by Dimitra Zantza and Panagiotis Koulouris. It takes its name from the initials of their two children, Nina and Stathis. Dimitra and Panagiotis are nursery school teachers. They have been working in primary education since 2001. They have been involved in puppetry for the last 30 years, staging puppet shows and teaching puppet-making. They have staged hundreds of performances at festivals, in local councils, cultural associations and schools throughout Greece. In their performances, they mainly use glove puppets and marionettes. (Muppets)
Taking children’s animism as their starting point, they believe that breathing life to inanimate objects through puppetry is an adventure of true creativity that engages both children and adults.
- Panagiotis Koulouris is a nursery school teacher and has been involved in puppetry as an amateur since 1988, the year he graduated from the Thessaloniki College of Early Years Education. He worked at YMCA from 1991 to 2000, running courses in puppetry and puppet-making for adults. He worked with groups of primary school children in the creative activities programme run by the YMCA, organising puppet theatre and shadow theatre performances with the children. Since 2001, he has been working as a nursery school teacher in the state education system.
- Dimitra Zantza is a qualified nursery school teacher who graduated from the Department of Early Years Education at the University of Patras. Since 1994, she has been professionally involved in puppetry. She gives performances in local authorities and schools in the prefectures of Achaea, Corinthia, Elis, Aetolia-Acarnania and elsewhere. At the same time, she attends puppet theatre courses in Athens taught by the puppeteer Christos Avtsidis. She founded the puppet theatre troupe ‘The Storyteller with the Slippers’, with which she has given hundreds of performances in local councils and schools, on streets and in squares. She worked as a trainer and collaborator at the Employment Centre for People with Disabilities run by the Municipality of Patras (for two years), running puppet-making workshops and staging puppet theatre performances with the children. Since 2001, she has been working as a nursery school teacher in the public education system.
