Paper, scissors, theater

Taiwan has a long and distinguished tradition of puppetry based on stories adapted from classical literature or ancient legend.

But over the past six years, however, Sun Chen-chieh (孫成傑) and his Puppet Beings Theater Company (偶偶偶劇團) have been doing a different kind of theater, one that draws on modern puppet theater, which is the inspiration for its latest performance, Paper (紙), beginning tonight at the Taipei Culture Center.

Rather than build puppets made from leather or draw on ancient tales for the story line, Sun strips puppet theater down to its barest elements by taking mundane objects and infusing them with life. He calls it Object Theater.

"You simply take an object and see what it looks like and play with it. We don't try to fix it or figure it out," he said.

The self-taught puppeteer has been doing children's theater for over two-decades.

"When I first started, there [were] no schools and nobody to teach me so I read a lot and watched a lot of puppet theater from Europe and the US," he said. But 10 years ago he felt he had reached the zenith of his knowledge and decided to go abroad to learn different techniques, first from the respected Hungarian puppeteer and pedagogue Jan Dvorak and later at the University of Connecticut under famed puppeteer and director Bart Roccoberton, Jr.

Sun says Object Theater has more freedom to play and experiment with ideas than traditional theater because it's not hindered by a long apprenticeship or ancient stories. This enables Sun to create plays that children can relate to.

But using simple objects and infusing them with personalities is no easy task. Sun and his crew of black-clad puppeteers worked over fifty hours inventing the cast of paper characters for the show.

Before setting out on Paper, Sun searched for the ideal object that could be adapted to the stage. He first thought of the kitchen but soon rejected it because of the many dangerous implements such as knives and forks that could hurt the children he typically performs for. He eventually decided to use paper because of its versatility.

"Paper is a very good thing because you can use it to make sound, you can bend it ... you can do a lot of things because there are different kinds and colors of paper," he said.

The play consists of four 15-minute vignettes. The first is a moral tale about modern society's fear of strangers. "Beginning about twenty years ago, parents tell their children to avoid strangers," Sun said. He tackles this issue head on by having two children run away from an elderly man who has found their ball.

Sun created handheld windmills in a variety of sizes and colors to tell the second story, which concerns issues of identity. The third tale is based on the fable called The Blue Bird. In the final piece, Sun uses rectangular and triangular pieces of paper to create 120 new shapes.

"After viewing the show, we hope that children and parents can go home and create their own shapes," he said.