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Puppets tackle 'Narnia' prequel

The face of God? PHOTO COURTESY OF EYUAN PUPPET THEATER

If your Mandarin-speaking children were awed by Narnia -- or just like puppet shows -- Eyuan Puppet Theater (一元布偶劇團) has a treat for them: a lively 70-minute rendition of The Magician's Nephew (魔法師的外甥), the prequel to C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia.

The story, to be performed by a young cast which uses a combination of full-body suits and puppets, follows a boy whose magician uncle accidentally sends him to a parallel universe. The boy then witnesses the creation of Narnia and searches for a magical apple in a walled-off garden.

If a few of those elements sound familiar, they're supposed to. The troupe's leader, Nigel Hsieh (謝念祖), said he had long planned to make a puppet show out of this book, partially for its allusions to the Bible's book of Genesis. "Everyone in Taiwan just believes in science. I want to expose them to a different point of view," Hsieh said.

At the same time, he insists the production is about building a wider cultural vocabulary, not pushing religion. The main point of the show is to entertain and educate children.

"There's no turning water into wine or anything like that," he said.

This is in line with C.S. Lewis' own thinking. While he was known as a Christian author, he objected to the idea that The Chronicles of Narnia were about Christianity.

"It all began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion," Lewis wrote in Of Other Worlds. "At first there wasn't anything Christian about [the Narnia books]; that element pushed itself in of its own accord."

Performances at the National Taiwan Arts Education Center (國立台灣藝術教育館本部及演藝廳) 47, Nanhai Road, Taipei (台北市南海路47號) take place today and tomorrow at 7:30pm, and tomorrow and Sunday at 2:30pm. Tickets range from NT$300 to NT$900. Following the Taipei performances, the show will play in Keelung, Hsinchuang, and Fengshan.

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