A practical reason for teaching TV puppetry is that it is easier to learn. While hand puppets take four years to learn, TV puppets take only months. On the fifth week of the course, students will practice with Chen Wu Hsuan Long Chi (真武玄龍記) a short play about a young man who gives up his studies to pursue martial arts and then goes on a journey to fight crime and preserve justice. Han Chen wrote the script using characters from TV puppet dramas and included several Taiwanese folk songs.
Although the audience does not have to understand the significance of the masks and other rules to understand the a TV puppet performance, the use of colloquial Taiwanese and references to Taiwanese customs are still a major part of the shows.
The teaching is conducted in Chinese with props such as a transparent puppet to instruct non-Chinese-speakers. Language, Han Chen said, is not a problem in learning and appreciating puppetry. "I have seen Japanese puppet shows and been deeply moved by their solemnity and magnificent beauty. But I don't speak any Japanese at all and understand none of the play's Japanese lines. Puppets can communicate with humans without using language," Chen said.
Chen said he also hoped that the course would lead to Westernized versions of Taiwanese puppet theater. "Since TV puppets are already innovative, anything is possible now. You may speak English lines, even perform English stories," Chen said, adding, however, that some quintessential Taiwanese ideas and traditional verses would be lost.
"Still, two things never change in Taiwanese puppetry, one is that it's performed by puppets only; and the other is that one person does the voice-overs for all the characters, or it's not Taiwanese puppet theater anymore," Chen Chian-hua said.
"As long as you're human, you will be attracted to puppet shows. No matter where you come from, you will enjoy Taiwanese puppet theater," Chen said.
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