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Puppet festival announced

A grand-scale puppet theater festival will be held in Kaohsiung County next month, a county official said yesterday.

From Feb. 10 to Mar. 4, the 2007 Global Puppet Theater Festival will be held at Weiwu Camp (衛武營), the county's director of the Cultural Affairs Bureau Wu Hsu-feng (吳旭峰) said.

"Different countries developed different forms of puppet performance," Kaohsiung County Commissioner Yang Chiu-hsing (楊秋興) said at a news conference in Taipei. "Through international exchange, I hope new ideas will be brought into old traditions."

Ten puppet theater companies from seven countries, including the US, Ireland, Italy, France, Brazil, India and Indonesia, have been invited to perform at the festival, in addition to local groups, organizers said.

"There will also be around 200 puppets from countries like Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia from our museum on display," said Robin Ruizendaal, director of a puppet theater museum in Taipei. "Some are over 100 years old."

Visitors will be able to operate some of the puppets, he added.

"We will move the whole studio there, so everyone can see how TV puppet shows are filmed" said Huang Feng-yi (黃鳳儀), the daughter of Huang Chun-hsiung (黃俊雄), who is the leader of a well-known traditional Taiwanese puppet theater company.

Aside from the traditional puppet performances, modern artifacts will also be on display.

These will include Star Wars figures, Barbie dolls from the US, the UK, Australia, Japan and India, as well as dolls based on other cartoon characters, the organizer said.

"It will be a great family outing destination during the Lunar New Year holidays," Yang said.
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