Karel Van Ransbeeck has worked as a puppeteer, director or production designer for several Belgian puppet theatre companies, including Taptoe, De Maan, Welle, Vlinders & Co and Froe Froe. He taught for seven years at the School voor Poppenspel in Mechelen (now Het Firmament) and he has given puppet show workshops in Flanders and the Netherlands. As a puppet manipulator, he has worked for Belgium’s national television and school television channels and for Les Guignols (Canal+).
Since 1994 Karel Van Ransbeeck has been the artistic director of Theater De Spiegel, founded as a puppet theatre by his father in 1965. Karel grew up inside this puppet theatre and eventually took over from his father as its manager, shifting the emphasis from puppet theatre to a unique combination of puppets and objects with music.
Since 2001 Theater De Spiegel has received subsidies from the Flemish Ministry of Culture as a music theatre company. On his artistic quest to develop a theatre language with wide public appeal, Karel Van Ransbeeck always looks for a symbiosis between figures, objects, music, sound and text.
In 2004 he created ‘De Rode Draak’ (The Red Dragon), his first theatre production for a specific target group: children aged under three. Work for infants has since been an intrinsic part of Theater De Spiegel.
Karel Van Ransbeeck came up with the concept for several of Theater De Spiegel’s shows, and also directed or designed the set for them.