The Lunar New Year, which will usher in the year of the rat, is nearly upon us, and the Taiyuan Puppet Theater Company (TPTC, 台原偶戲團) has revived The Wedding of the Mice (大稻埕的老鼠新娘) to honor the occasion. The production, which opens tomorrow, is an innovative puppet show designed to appeal to both children and adults. The company, in its effort to push puppetry out of the nursery into mainstream contemporary theater, is also working with the French puppet troupe Les Zonzons on another project at the Taipei Artist Village (TAV, 台北國際藝術村).
The Wedding of the Mice was first performed in 2002. It is an adaptation of a traditional Chinese tale, with a script by Robin Ruizendaal, TPTC's artistic director, and features European rod puppets as well as Taiwanese glove puppets.
A story teller, played by Wu Shanshan (伍姍姍), makes the setup particularly accessible to children, while the production's innovative score - a combination of contemporary Western and Chinese classical music - gives the show an artistic edginess that appeals to adults.
PHOTO COURTESY OF TPTC THEATER COMPANY
The Wedding of the Mice begins with the narrator recalling a childhood experience in which she visited the mansion of the mouse lord, whose daughter is expected to marry whichever suitor succeeds in catching a ball of red silk. The daughter is, in fact, in love with a poor mouse who her father thinks unworthy and who is unable to compete. Needless to say, true love, with the help of the narrator, eventually wins the day and a great celebration is held. In Chinese legend, the wedding of the mice takes place on the third day of the Lunar New Year, when traditionally people scatter salt, rice and cake crumbs in their houses for the celebration.
TPTC's project with Les Zonzons, La Boite or The Box, is in rehearsal stages at the TAV. The title refers to the cases in which puppets are kept when they are not being used. In this play, the box has been expanded into a metal frame covered with removable canvas panels and separated into a bi-level performance area, allowing for multiple levels of presentation: the "stages" that are cut into the box, the canvas screens behind which shadow puppets are manipulated, the projections onto the screens and the inside of the box, which is seen when the screens are removed.
Though the official opening of the show will be in Lyon, France in March and it won't premier in Taipei until the Taipei International Arts Festival in August, a preview is scheduled for Jan. 26.
PHOTO COURTESY OF TPTC THEATER COMPANY
La Boite is the brainchild of Chung Chih-chia (鍾志佳), a Taiwanese curator based in Paris. Chung, who grew up in rural Taiwan where puppetry was an integral part of the culture, said he wanted to bring the two puppet troupes together. "I wanted to do this for the same reason that we travel. When you put different things together, you want to see what will emerge," he said in an interview with the Taipei Times.
"We are constantly looking for ways of making puppet theater really contemporary," said Ruizendaal, "rather than always being considered something associated with folklore or children's theater." Cooperation between TPTC and Les Zonzons is just one more instance of the group's efforts to get Taiwanese glove puppetry taken seriously as a useful tool for contemporary theater.
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