Puppets do battle in the digital age

At his ramshackle studio in Huwei in southern Taiwan, Huang Jun-hsiung (黃俊雄) continues a tradition that goes back hundreds of years but which he has now made particularly his own. He is the patriarch of a large family which is responsible for some of the most innovative developments in glove-puppet theater, a medium that Taiwanese like to think of as particularly their own.

This month, Taiwan Television (台視) released a new series titled The Dragon Lady of the Bitter Sea (苦海女神龍), the eighth installment of this 100-episode program screens tonight in the 6pm time slot. It tells the story of a warrior princess who wanders the world seeking to regain her rightful place with the help of other warriors, not least Shih Yen-wen (史艷文) a character long established in other Huang family productions and a virtual superstar in his own right.

This martial arts and chivalry epic is performed totally by puppets, although much embellished by special effects. With this program Huang Jun-hsiung continues to push the boundaries of what constitutes Taiwanese puppet theater, a medium he believes still has a great future before it.

Thinking outside the box

What Huang doesn't believe is that puppet theater can go on developing in the same old rut, no matter how skilled the performer and how culturally exulted the rut. "You have people who are experts at a type of performance. They think no one can touch them, that they have no competition," Huang said, "But the competition is everywhere. Their competition is the audience." A quick look at the official Web site bulletin board shows that people are already demanding more than the half-hour slot provided. "You can't have too much of a good thing," says someone billing himself Super Yunchou Fan, after what is probably Huang's most famous work The Scholar Knight of Yunchou (雲州大儒俠), which ran for 538 episodes back in the 1960s.

This high regard for his audience has made Huang the most commercially successful puppet master in Taiwan. The Pili (霹靂) group, run by two sons by his first marriage, provides a steady diet of TV puppet shows and also created the massive local hit movie The Legend of the Sacred Stone (聖石傳說). Now as the creative genius behind HV Puppets Broadcasting, he is creating new programs for Taiwan's terrestrial and cable channels. The Dragon of the Bitter Sea has already been spun off into numerous merchandizing deals ranging from credit and telephone card images to soft drink packaging.

The changes he has made range from honing his own skills, making changes in the design of puppets, developing his own material and making use of modern technology to enhance the show's appeal. Huang is no stranger to popularity, his stage shows having packed houses back in the 1970s and his early television programs reaching a level of popularity that even had the government worried about the social effects of puppet mania.

Recalling her own youth, Li Su-hsiang (李素香), a teacher of Taiwanese at the Taipei Language Institute recalled that students and even teachers would sneak off during breaks to watch the show. "You just had to make sure you got back before the teacher did," she recalled. At the time, Huang's Shih Yan-wen (史艷文), the hero of the The Scholar Knight of Yunchou , created a 97 percent viewer ratings in its time slot for TTV and led to a crackdown on Taiwanese arts. In an interview with the Taipei Times at his studio in Huwei, Huang insisted that part of the appeal of his art was its "realism" and his willingness to push the traditional boundaries of his art form. To demonstrate, he picked up a glove puppet seemingly little different from those used by most conventional troupes, except that it was a little bigger -- a martial character in a bright red robe wielding a pole axe. "The thing is, the body must remain still even as he wields the weapon," Huang said, moving the puppet in a way that created a feel both of strength and weight. "You simply can't have the puppets flying around," he said waving his arms around dismissively.