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TAIPEI: Taipei-based Dutch puppet master Robin
Ruizendaal draws his inspiration from Taiwanese folklore and Western
fairy tales in his bid to promote the island’s traditional art of
glove puppetry.
In doing so, Ruizendaal, director
of a leading Taiwanese puppet museum and its troupe of theatrical
puppeteers, has created a repertoire that has caught the fancy of
local and international audiences alike.
His multinational troupe features
Taiwanese puppet master Chen Xi-huang, son of legendary puppeteer Li
Tian-lu, Chen’s protege Massimo Godoli Peli of Italy and a crew of
narrators, light and stage designers, and a puppet maker.
The team has traveled as far as
Russia and Central America to stage Taiwanese puppet theater in some
30 countries and have collaborated with their peers in Asia and
Europe.
“People are always surprised to
see that the leader of a Taiwanese puppet troupe is a Westerner,”
said Ruizendaal, who also serves as the lead scriptwriter. “I
think this shows that Taiwan is more internationalized and more
open-minded towards outsiders.”
Ruizendaal came to the island
some 15 years ago to help plan a puppetry festival after gaining his
PhD in Sinology on Chinese marionette theater from the University of
Leiden in Holland.
As part of his studies he did
research in China’s southeastern Fujian province where glove
puppetry was popular in the 19th century. While there are no records
to show just when glove puppetry originated, some scholars believe
it dates back to the Sung dynasty (960 to 1279 AD) when various
forms of puppetry were prevalent.
Also known as budaixi, it later
spread to Taiwan as people migrated from mainland China, and was
performed mainly at religious festivals.
Puppeteers maneuver glove dolls
on ornate wooden stages to present historical and martial arts
stories, often with stunts such as somersaults or plate-juggling.
After working as a curator at a
paper museum for a while, Ruizendaal joined the TTT Puppet
Center—now renamed the Lin Liu-Hsin Puppet Theatre Museum after
its founder, Paul Lin’s father.
The four-story museum, located in
Taipei’s Dadaocheng area where puppet troupes once thrived, boasts
a collection of some 7,000 puppetry artifacts from across Asia.
“There is a large puppetry
audience in Taiwan where television puppet drama is popular,”
Ruizendaal said. “But it is still a big challenge to get people to
buy tickets and go see puppetry at theatres.”
There are an estimated 300 puppet
troupes in Taiwan mostly performing at religious fairs, while only
10 groups are doing theatrical puppetry, according to Ruizendaal.
To broaden the appeal of
theatrical puppetry, Ruizendaal has fused the traditional Taiwanese
puppetry with Western story-telling and theatrical effects to create
an original repertoire.
“I draw inspirations from my
upbringing and from the Sinology and Chinese culture I have
studied,” he said.
One brainchild is Marco Polo, a
love story inspired by the Italian explorer famous for his travels
to imperial China. It is staged with dialogue in Taiwanese and
Italian against a background of classical Chinese music and Italian
opera.
“We want to keep the spirit of
classic puppetry alive with some modern effects. We hope to produce
refined theatrical puppetry even if we have to call everyone to sell
a ticket,” Ruizendaal said.
But he admitted it is difficult
to promote works with a traditional theme such as The Honorable
Thief Liao Tianding about a Taiwanese folk hero performed on a
vintage wooden stage.
Ruizendaal lamented that Taiwan,
like other Asian countries heavily influenced by Western pop
culture, is facing a lack of interest among young people in
traditional puppetry.
“There are people coming from
France and Spain to study Taiwanese puppetry at our museum but local
youth think it’s more sexy to become film makers, video artists or
disc jockeys,” he said.
“It seems crazy to them to
study the obsolete puppetry. There is a crisis to pass on the craft
if nobody wants to learn it,” he said, adding that the museum
hopes to attract new blood by offering free puppeteer
apprenticeships.
--AFP
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