Το μαύρο ψαράκι

To Mavro Psaraki is a children's theater production at Mikros Kerameikos in Gazi, running Sundays at 11:30 through April 2026. A shadow puppet fish appears on the screen, and small hands reach forward before anyone tells them not to.

Dinos Pontikopulos adapts Samad Behrangi's 1968 Iranian fable — a freshwater fish that refuses to stay in the stream and swims toward the sea. Behrangi wrote it under the Shah's censorship as a parable of courage; its illustrator, Farshid Mesghali, won the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1974. Pontikopulos and Frosso Zagoraiou perform with shadow theater, puppetry, and contemporary dance, using puppets and set pieces built by Olympia Sideridou. The production is now in its nineteenth season.

If you want passive screen time, this is live and close. If your child follows a puppet fish into open water at arm's length, this Sunday earns the early alarm.

Mikros Kerameikos is at Eumolpidon 13, two minutes from Kerameikos metro. Fifty-five minutes, ages three and up. Tickets from six to ten euros.

Nineteen seasons. The fish still swims toward the sea, and the children still reach for the screen.