Mamulengo is the traditional puppet theater of Pernambuco — a folk form with roots in both Portuguese glove puppetry and African performance traditions, developed over centuries in the rural Northeast. The Museu do Mamulengo, housed in a colonial building in the historic centre, holds one of the largest collections of mamulengo figures in Brazil: several hundred puppets representing the stock characters of the tradition, from the comic hero João Grilo to the devil, the plantation owner, and the police chief.
The puppets are displayed with enough context to understand the social commentary embedded in the form — mamulengo was always political theater, performed in markets and festivals, making jokes at the expense of the powerful that would have been dangerous to say directly. The museum is modest in scale and not heavily visited, which makes it easy to spend time with individual pieces. If you find yourself drawn in, ask staff about mamulengo performances scheduled in the region; the living tradition is more interesting than the museum.