Mr. Li making Xiaweidian shadow puppets at Mentougou Museum.

Mr. Li making Xiaweidian Shadow Puppet at Mentougou Museum, China. July 2008.

Mentougou is known as a Communist-era historical point in China, a rich area in coal extraction, but also it is famous as the place where one style of Beijing Shadow Puppets is made, known as Xiaweidian or Beijing west school.

Xiaweidian, a village in Mentougou district, is home to the west school and has a long tradition of carving and playing shadow puppets. -Beijing's "west school" style puppets are coated with water color, not the usual tung oil and offer a slightly different viewing experience-, experts say.

During Summer 2008 Mentogou Museum has an exhibition of 700 hundreds puppets from diferent parts of China, and the highlights of the exhibition are precisely those puppets from Beijing Xipai Xiaweidian School. (1)

Xiaweidian Shadow Puppets. July 2008.

Master Li, the last of a long lineage of puppeteers from Xiaweidian, showed to me how to do the final steps in the elaboration of two Xiaweidian Puppets I bought from him.

Mr. Li making Xiaweidian Shadow Puppets. Mentougou Museum, China. July 2008.


Mr. Li making leather shadow puppets

the same video in Vimeo

Mr. Li making "Xiaweidian" Shadow Puppets. Mentougou Museum. from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

(1) There will be another post about the exhibition.

Tamasaburo performing in Beijing, a second part.

Tamasaburo, "Mudanting". Beijing, China. 2008.

Some impressions come with time...

It’s more than a month since Tamasaburo’s performance of Mudanting, The Peony Pavillion, and I think it is a good time to recall and then express new impressions if they are any.

Tamasaburo in Beijing, "Mudanting"

Again, intelligence.Tamasaburo’s version of Mudanting started with a Japanese style introduction, and actually not with "Mudanting" instead he introduced himself performing a portrayal of a famous chinese character, Yang Guifei the concubine, only for this first scene. Tamasaburo’s version then is constructed from the kind of ritual entrance of any Kabuki Classic performance: a chorus chanting, the main character doing her entrance very slow, getting all the public’s attention through her first movements. I was recording video but I was watching only Tamasaburo’s movements, listening to the music and to the choir; when someone from the staff asked me to turn off my camera I was surprised I was still recording it.

This kind of ritual was a very clever introduction; it showed the Chinese spectators that the actor on the stage was a Japanese figure, performing in his own style and introducing himself to all of us with the humility of an outsider and with respect. After that he could perform Kunqu because he didn’t appear as someone “coming to teach”; he, talking with actions, had come to be a cultural diplomat, to share his artistic skills with the finest and most magnificent performing Art in China. He knew very well the Chinese spectator.

I also remember how Tamasaburo shared the main role, Du Linang, with two other Chinese actors, they were younger and very well trained. We could see and even compare movements, voices and beauty. Tamasaburo is a star, but he was performing the role as any other young player. That was an opportunity for enjoying this kind of role (an actor performing a female character) for the first time in my life; I enjoyed those three different ways of performing (as they were three) with their voices, with their movements and their beauty.

Beyond any technical skill or talent, a glimpse of intelligence can become the origin of success.

Tamasaburo with the other two Chinese actors; they three performed the main role. "Mudantin" Beijing, 2008.

While I was spying him, he stopped talking and looked at me.


I wanted to say sorry because of the video issue (though you may not believe me, in China there is no problem to take photographs during a performance of any Chinese Opera, wherever you are), but I didn’t find the guy of the staff inside the theatre, so I went out and looked for him in one of the beautiful courtyards. Then, while I was talking with the guy, I noticed that there was a big fabric screen dividing the courtyard. Soon I was alone I went through to discover that it was the part the theatre prepared for the cast to refresh themselves, to smoke or to receive people. And that was what Tamasaburo was doing. I saw him talking with a group of Chinese, kind of bored, respectful, listening to them and using a translator to keep the conversation.

The man was there, without costume or makeup, only with a tiny shirt and that white foundation used by any female makeup designer.

An image which closely resembles the Tamasaburo I saw at Huguang Theatre’s courtyard. Mudantin. Beijing, 2008.

He was talking with the group of Chinese, neither him nor anyone else noticed I was there, so I concentrated on his figure and gestures. I’ve always loved the idea of seeing any genius as a human being, a real human being, and that evening I had the chance to do it again. I remember how feminine his figure was: thin, tall and solemn. And then, my brain instantly started recalling any transvestites I had seen in my life; how silly of me! But the white face, the net covering his hair and his attitude, everything reminded me of those people. I had to put my thoughts in order and relocated his image on the stage on a first plane in my memory, and recalled those videos of him I had seen.

In the middle of this absurd game of unconscious comparisons, while I was spying him, he stopped talking and looked at me; it was only for a second (maybe less), but he stopped and looked at me. All I could perceive in his eyes was tranquility and, of course, seriousness. Then everything returned to normalcy, he was talking again with the help of the translator.

I didn’t use my camera, I simply couldn’t do it; if he were performing on the stage..., but no, he wasn’t. I was there without any permission, it seemed embarrassing, no, impolite, rude of me. It was a very private moment, like a naked man trying to rest after a busy day. It was nonsense.


Helping to build the myth


A Japanese friend commented to me about Tamasaburo’s life and how some Japanese see this artist. She told me Tamasaburo wasn’t part of any Kabuki family, so he wasn’t part of Kabuki’s tradition. What did this mean? Well, I looked at some internet pages and some books and it seems that Japanese respected him more because he had to work harder than others to reach the place he enjoys today. Kabuki actors who belong to a certain lineage of families are heirs to the style and work of their fathers, they have “the blood”, so a big part of the way ahead is already prepared, they only have the obligation to work with persistece to be part of the Kabuki tradition. Actors like Tamasaburo have to convince others with work, with talent, with professionalism and, of course, with their artistic values.

She also told me that Tamasaburo had a poliomyelitis problem in his left hand, so his work for getting such skills as a Kabuki actor was even harder! He broke the myth people usually have about the impossibility of becoming an actor or dancer (Kabuki onnagata players are both) if the aspirant has such physical problems.

I can’t assure the veracity of her comments, but I must accept that I want to play the game of helping to construct a myth (or destroying one?). I have enjoyed so much as a spectator of Tamasaburo’s work on stage that I am sure he is walking rapidly through the way of myths even without my help.

*

Creation in my life has always been linked to the pleasure of being a spectator. If I have created something in my life it has been thanks to seeing or listening to something extraordinary before. I am not looking for imitation of the biggest, I am enjoying what some people call “inspiration” but by the biggest, and I love it. After seeing them perform, after crying, trembling, laughing or getting deep in my own self I can write or picture anything I want, without them my artistic life would be unbearable.

Beijing Opera: Mei Lanfang 梅兰芳. Plates from The Drunken Beauty 贵妃醉酒

Mei Lanfang as Concubine Yang in Guifei Zuijiu

Introduction: a book as a source.

During my first six months living in Beijing I was trying to buy any Chinese book about Beijing Opera translated to English, specially about Mei Lanfang work, but my finding was limited to some simple books aimed to foreign common readers for a better understanding of Beijing Opera. Of course I found several books in Chinese, impossible to read (my Chinese was and is awful) but with marvelous pictures and illustrations.

It was in February 2006 when I found at the Foreign Languages Book Store in Wangfujing street a bilingual collection-book called (in his English version) “A Collection of Illustrative Plates Of Beijing Opera Performed During Mei Lanfang’s Visit To The United States”. This was one of my happiest moments inside any Chinese bookshop, I had in my hands the first “readable” book written by a Chinese author with not only important information but with real documents about the way Mei Lanfang prepared and performed plays, in this case during the 1930-tour to USA.

This book also put on his real place Qi Rushan, researcher, theorician, dramaturgist, and stage director who side by side with Mei Lanfang transformed the face of Chinese traditional theatre and made a revolution from inside. Thanks to him Mei was able to reach the top of the world of big stars of beginnings of the 20th Century. (1)

Qi Rushan

But ¿what does this book has inside? And ¿why did this book put on his place the name of Qi Rushan ? I will answer these questions with a direct quote from (the editor) Wang Wenzhang’s preface (2):

“Mei Lanfang’s visiting performance in U.S. causes such an éclat that is certainly the fruit of his consummate artistic accomplishment which he persistenly pursues. The view is widely accepted to explain and evaluate the historic significance of the visiting performance in U.S. However, not a few people know the experience that Mei Lanfang and his companies had made a series of detailed and comprehensive designs and preparations before the visiting performance. Among these include Mr. Qi Rushan, the organizer and prmoter of the visiting performance to U.S., who is in charge of the introduction and publicity of Peking Opera.

Mr. Qi Rushan received well education on the traditional Chinese culture even as a child and made wide journey for business throughout Europe when he was young. He goes deep into Western drama due to the often visits to theatres. Mr. Qi Rushan assists Mei Lanfang to set up the art of Mei School (3) when he came back to China. He contributes his life to the research of Chinese traditional opera and makes the relevant work turn from so-called “vulgar” research to academic study with true significance.

Mr. Qi Rushan on the behalf of Nation Opera Association invites famous painters to draw everything able to be shown by paintings in relation to Peking Opera from Peking Opera costume, facial makeup, props, musical instruments, dancing shape and theatre, add introduction in both Chinese and English and finally make them scroll of paintings easy to hang up as to “diffuse the Nation Opera to abroad” and to make the American audience understand Peking Opera through a direct way at a greater depht. It is easy for the American audience to understand Peking Opera.

The total of 183 scroll of paintings and 1987 plates to some extent become an encyclopedia of peking Opera knowledge but also display vividly the aesthetic principle of Peking Opera performing art. (…)

“A Collection of Illustrative Plates Of Beijing Opera Performed During Mei Lanfang’s Visit To The United States collects and publishes the majority of Peking Opera paintings drwan before Mei Lanfang’s visiting performance in U.S. 70 years ago. The total of 1092 paintings is preserved by the Academy of Chinese Traditional Opera (forefather of the Art Academy of China). The rest of the paintings about theatre houses are lost before the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and hard to find. (…) ”



Plates of Guifei Zuijiu “The Drunken Beauty”

Mei Lanfang, Guifei Zuijiu

Synopsis of the text:

Yang Yuhuan, better known as Guifei (Imperial Concubine of the First Order), is the consort most favoured by Emperor Ming Huang (685-762 AD) of the Tang Dynasty. She is invited by the emperor to admire the flowers and have a drink at the Pavilion of One Hundred Flowers. As appointed, Guifen comes to the pavillion with her entourage of palace maids and eunuchs. She waits a long time but the emperor fails to appear. She finally gets word that Ming Huang has returned to the Western Place Court to visit Meifei, another concubine. Disappointed and resentful, she has no alternative but to drink alone. She becomes bitter when she recalls how she was doted on in her early days at the Palace. Wine aggravates her sadness and makes her quite drunk. She returns to her quarters, helped by the maids, cheerless and lonesome.


Inside the book we read:

note: It is a difficult text, it seems the translation was made by an inexpert translator, so, please, make an effort.

“It originates from Drunken Concubine Yang during the reign of Emeperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty and appears on the stage of Beijing Opera from Han Opera in the first years of Emeperor Guangxu. It is a one-act song and dance drama. There are many complicated postures such as holding a cup in the mouth (4), sleeping fish and drunken walk (5). The role has been played by military ‘dan’ (female role). In 1914, mei lanfang learnt the play from Lu Sanbao when he was at yowen troupe (6). With the accumulation of stage experience and thoughts, Mei Lanfang made many innivations in the traditional performing style of the play. He did away with performing on stilts and change ‘huashan’ role to play. He threw away vulgar and obscene performance and words (7) after concubine Yang and paid attention her depressed feeling in the forbidden palace. He enhanced techniques of song and dance. Each singing sentence was untited with postures and expressions in his eyes. It made the image of Concubine Yang dignified and appearing in all her glory. Since that, the Drunken beauty had a new meaning of thought. All the pictures depict main dance postures in Act One Drunken Beauty and Act Two.” (8)

Plates with postures using shan (Fan)

Plate 1: 孤立 (Guli) Standing Alone.

Plate 2: 凌虚 (Lingxu) Soaring Aloft.

Plate 3: 惊鸿 (Jinghong) Frightened Swan.

Plate 4: 日照 (Rizhao) Shining Sun.

Plate 5: 羽集 (Yuji) Congregated Birds.

Plate 6: 延伫 (Yanzhu) Standing and Watching.

Plate 7: 指蓬 (Zhipeng) Pointing to Penglai the fairy Mountain.

Plate 8: 迁延 (Qianyan) Hesitation.

Plates with postures using water sleeves


Plate 9: 卧云 (Woyun) Lying in the Clouds.

Plate 10: 散风 (Sanfeng) Scattering the Wind.

Plate 11: 低鬓 (Dibin) Lowering the Head.

Plate 12: 荣与 (Rongyu) Allowing.

Video with 1930-plates and 1956-film of "The Drunken Beauty"



The same video on Vimeo

Beijing Opera: Mei Lanfang 梅兰芳. Plates from The Drunken Beauty 贵妃醉酒 from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

(1) Now I’ve found some other fantastic books, in French and English (and even translated some articles from Chinese), which have given to me a deeper view of the importance of this interesting actor. Qi Rushan was hidden by Chinese art historians because during the revolution he decided to flee and to stay in Taiwan and not in the new Communist China.
(2) It is a real direct quotations that could have some mistakes for those scrutinous of the language. Bilingual book doesn’t mean written in two languages, so written first in Chinese the book was translated by a Chinese translator with his skills on hand.
(3) The Mei School in one of the “styles” of performing which made school in China after the success Mei Lanfang had during these years.
(4) “holding the cup in the mouth” is a posture (chain of actions) which is easy recognizable in the full-version film.
(5) “Drunken walk” is a posture (chain of actions) easy recognizable in the full-version film.
(6) Photograph showing Mei Lanfang and his teacher Lu Sanbao:

(7) It seems that because of the nature of the subject, a drunken spiteful concubine, the play was, before Mei, performed as a parody of drunk women, and people used to go with the expectation of seeing obscene moments on the stage.
(8) Page 320. “A Collection of Illustrative Plates Of Beijing Opera Performed During Mei Lanfang’s Visit To The United States” Collected by the Arts Academy of China. Wang Wenzhang, chief editor. Culture and Art Publishing House. Beijing, China. 2005.

Buddhist Meditation and Religious Traditional Music at Puning Temple. Chengde, China.

Puning Temple. Chengde, China.

Buddhist meditation and religious music are not precisely a scenic experience for themselves but after they are inside of a religious but tourist sight (Puning temple) then they become immediately a scenic experience for any visitor. In this case, that initially touristic experience develops in something extraordinary when the spectator-tourist feels that inherent life coming from those Buddhist monks praying or those traditional musicians playing their instruments, working as any other day they do.

They were doing what they usually do, without any theatrical or even artistic interest, but they had been put on a stage by the tourist officials; so, we could be pilgrims or spectators as we wanted, we’d share their religion or we’d watch an spectacle. This was a extraordinary dichotomy: they were performing and not performing for us because they were simply doing their own job.

First, I could have the experience of watching and listening a big group of Buddhist monks (mostly teenagers) praying and reciting mantras inside a shrine, playing instruments and blessing pilgrims; it was a visual experience yes, but it was specially for the ear and for the mind. I was invited to participate in their meditation, just seating there and listening; my experience first theatrical became spiritual and uniquely total. I didn’t recorded any video during my meditation, of course I didn’t need it.

Buddhist Monks praying at Puning Temple

Some steps up (this temple like any other temple in China is shaped like a hill), face to the Kuanyin of Thousands Arms Shrine, I found a group of traditional musicians working for the pilgrims who wanted to pray to the Goddess with a special musical ambiance.

Traditional instruments and traditional customs, musicians dressed for a theatrical performance. They were in the middle of that mass of pilgrims, playing their religious music, giving an introduction to the Kuanyin’s Shrine entrance.

Traditional Musicians at Puning Temple






Traditional Musicians. Puning Temple. Chengde, China.

This was a refreshing and lively visit after a day before without life, with those huge empty buildings and that wasted Qing style Beijing Opera theatre. I wasn’t anymore inside a museum I was inside of a lively open air theatre.

Chengde was being part of a new perception of my theatrical Chinese experience.

China: Court theatres in the Qing Dynasty (Part 2). Chengde, A theatre inside a Tibetan temple.

A theatre building in the middle of an enormous museum...

Peking Opera theatre building. Chengde, China.

Chengde city is an extraordinary museum of diplomacy, it shows the waste of money and creative effort Chinese emperors had calling for the union of their empire: an enormous Summer imperial villa with its palace and imperial gardens (with lakes, rivers, pavilions, bridges, pagodas, etc.), surrounded by several replicas of the biggest and most important temples in China. This kind of diplomacy was an expensive but good way to please governors and principals from every important province in that imperial China.

Potala palace replica in Chengde, China.

Potala palace replica. Chengde, China.

During the Qing dynasty, between 18th and 19th Centuries, and thought for the visit of the Dalai Lama, it was built a replica of the Potala Palace of Lhasa; its interiors were adapted as reception halls as well as imperial rooms for those special guests. Some years after the visit of the Dalai Lama, inside of one of the main courtyards, it was built a real size-Peking Opera theatre (Beijing Opera theatre), similar to those built inside the Forbidden City and inside the Summer Palace in Beijing.

Performance at Chengde Theatre during Qianlong era (around 1760)

Details of Peking Opera theatre inside a Potala palce replica. Chengde, China.

The palace received only once to any important figure (the Dalai Lama), and its theatre worked just a few times thanks to the Queen mother, Cixi, who loved Peking Opera. After the end of the imperial age all those monuments where abandoned and later converted in part of this huge museum of diplomacy and emptiness. Our Peking Opera theatre is currently used only in special official occasions.

Detail of Peking Opera theatre inside a Potala palace replica. Chengde, China.

In any case its importance lays in its architectonic work, in the beauty of its lines and specially in that perfection achieved at the end of the Qing Dynasty with these style of buildings. The end of the Qing dynasty was the beginning of the highest moment in Beijing Opera, the most beautiful theatres of Beijing Opera where constructed during the last years of the 19th Century.

So, my experience were contradictory: I loved the building because it was amazing, but I felt sad and disappointed because it was a wasted beauty. This case, not the only one in China, talked also to me about how "Han majority" conceived and currently conceive the cultural relation with Tibet and Tibetans: a Peking Opera theatre building inside a replica of the Potala Palace of Lhasa, house of the supreme leader of that country, yes, but also the supreme religious place in Tibet.

Peking Opera theatre in Chengde

"Nattayasal Hun Lakhon lek". Joe Louis Puppet Theatre from Bangkok

(translation from Spanish by Tadeo Berjón)

I visited Bangkok in December 2006 and I had the opportunity of exploring a whole Performing Art culture which, until that moment, was unknown to me and to my idea of world Performing Arts. The biggest surprise was that Thailand gave such special significanceto its own Performing Arts and to its own creators as places like Japan, Korea or Taiwan.

Thai Shadow Theatre: Nang yai

I knew about Thailand’s very famous Shadow theatre, Nang yai, and its special theatrical game backstage (with the puppeteers dancing, unbeknownst to the public, while they are performing), but my travel would be to another part of the country, from Bangkok through the North. I was looking for the other theatre and I found it with its fantastic world around it; but I also found another theatre with puppets and my discovery was so interesting that marked my memories about Thailand forever: this puppet theatre was a kind of fusion of the other Thai performing arts, unique in itself, it was the Nattayasal Hun Lakhon lek, best know as the Joe Louis Puppet Theatre.

Joe Louis (Sakorn Yangkhiawsod)

But, if I want to talk about Joe Louis and his Puppet Theatre, first I have to talk about Bunraku, that exceptional Japanese puppet theatre.

I can’t assure that Bunraku is the “best” Puppet theatre of the world, but in my point of view this theatre has become my point of reference for appraising the quality of performance techniques of other Puppet theatres in Asia at least (1). Beyond the idea of taste, there is the cold reality of the technique and the handling of the puppets, the structural complexity of the drama and the whole production in all of that Bunraku is the peak of evolution, because of its fineness, its elegance, because of its details and its cleanliness (2) (3).

And it is in Thailand, with Joe Louis Nattayasal Hun Lakhon lek (or the Joe Louis Traditional Thai Puppet Theatre) where I have seen again a puppet theatre with a beauty, strength, and capacity that I’ve only experienced seeing Bunraku. It is a theatre that in one sense has influence from the Japanese or has at least similar stage principles: the conceptualization of the staging and the way of achieving it. The differences between them are evident; coming from different cultures their esthetics are not the same, as well as their link to religion and spectacle; Bunraku is more linked to spectacle and Kabuki while Nattayasal hun lakhon lek is more linked to religious spectacle. Bunraku has an evolution of 400 years while Nattayasal Hun Lakhon lek theatre is only 100 years old.


If we want to talk about the history of Thai puppet theatre we’ll find that it is a little bit risky, that all data is lost in mythical narrations of their participants without much objectivity. In any case, it is possible to reconstruct history with some facts we are sure of and making a chain of them.

It is known that puppet theatre has been present in Thailand for hundreds of years, but it wasn’t until the end of 19th Century that a real dramatic style appeared. Before that, puppet theatre was a kind of spectacle where life and fantasy were shown with puppets, with literary images on stage. The world remembers well how puppet dancers filled the western imagination about the ancient world of Siam, with elephants and dancers that danced with characteristic Thai music and dressed with amazing and colorful costumes of green and gold.

There are records about some Chinese-style Puppet troupes performing only for the Thai Court during 18th and 19th Centuries, and some other low popular theatrical forms of Puppet theatre performing all over the country in fairs and religious events.

Khon dance-theatre (photography from the beginning of the 20th Century)

In 1905 the reknowned puppeteer of the Thai royal court, Krea Sapatawanich, created a new puppet theatre imitating Khon, the Classic masked dance-theatre of Thailand which reached its highest level of complexity at the middle of 19th Century during the period of King Rama II. Using practically all the elements of this theatre, master Krea gave Puppet Thai theatre the possibility of reaching, as Khon did, the highest level of quality when it comes to performing Arts.

Kohn dance-theatre (Photography of 2005)

The beauty of Khon is incomparable; brother to Khmer and Burmese dance-theatre and with its religious-stage origin in India’s Ramayana, it possesses fineness and complexity in its creation, in is physical codification, in its costumes, music, and use of narration. The visual aesthetics that we can observe on the murals of the Royal Palace in Bangkok, for example, attain movement and life through Khon’s magic.

Bangkok Main Temple's Murals

The modenisation achived by master Krea offered Thailand a real world-class puppet theatre. Nevertheless, the political situation at the time in which it originated prevented its expansion. Thailand was living a modernisation and westernisation process that caused the loss of artistic movements based on nationalist ideas or on religious and cultural siamese traditions (including master Krea’s puppet theatre). Little by little, the real puppet theatre fell out of favour with the king (all-powerful during those years) until, disappointed at its decline, Krea decided to put a radical end to his creation, destroying his puppets. It is said that, before his death in 1929, he performed a rite in which he cursed those who would try to imitate or continue his theatre; that day he threw into the Chao Phraya river (Bangkok’s main river) 100 of his puppets. And from those times darkness reins in the realm of Thai puppet theatre, surrounding it with a halo of mystery and superstition.


Master Krea’s widow zealously kept during her whole life, in her private collection, 30 of those legendary puppets, which were inherited by her only daughter. Years later, at the end of her life and knowing she had no descendants, master Krea’s daughter desperately looked for someone who could continuo with what her father created and destroyed, In 1985 she met a reknowned Thai actor, Sakom Yangkhiawsod, known as Joe Louis (Louis is an English mispronounciation of the Thai surname Liew), who had worked as a child in the company of the master puppeteer, and convinced him to continue with the lost tradition, giving him the 30 puppets that were her father’s property.

Form 10 years Joe Louis concentrated on rebuilding master Krea’s theatre, retaking all the elements he could, both from his personal memory as well as the base of it all, Khon. Since Khon was still a living theatre, the structural source was at hand, waiting to be imitated and studied to be adapted once more. The stories from the Ramakien, the Thai version of the Indian Ramayana, were also there, ready for use (4). With 7 sons and 2 daughters, in a patriarchal culture, Joe Louis had the human resources he needed to create his new puppet theatre company.

His theatre was so successful that in 1966 he was officially called a “National Artist”, which in Thailand is as important as the “national living treasure” title of Japan, for example.

In the year 2000 his house and theatre catch fire and all his puppets are lost in the fire, with just one of the precious puppets surviving the flames. It is said that Joe Louis explained the fire as a curse from master Krea’s. Yet, superstition doesn’t keep him from continuing what he had already started; he’d have to begin all over again. But disgrace brought with it a positive tinge: Joe Louis, by having to re-create the Thai puppet theatre, starts making his own contributions, which are based on two main premises: “to give more life to the puppets” and to keep the cultural tradition that master Krea’s puppet theatre offered (5). He worked enthusiastically on both the materials from which the puppets are built, as well as on the technique to give them more vitality.

Joe Louis Theatre’s Puppets

The puppets get most of their movement from their manufacture. The average height of the puppets is 50cm (6) and the basic material for making them is papier maché. Aluminum rolls joined by wires are used to give movement to the neck, the head and the mouth, while the hands, arms and the joints of wrists and legs are handled through sticks.

The hand movements are evermore refined, similar to the hand motions in Thai dances, which give great importance to their codification.

The blog author (Gustavo Thomas) at the Joe Louis Theatre Museum in Bangkok, Thailand.

Every puppet is handled by three puppeteers dressed in black (but who are visibly present on stage): one moves the head and the left arm, the other the legs, and a third one the right arm. The three puppeteers dance with Lakhon movements, which is the traditional Thai dance (7), while they handle the puppets on stage.

Live traditional Thai music and song is entwined with specialized narrators who follow the style of the Khon dance-theatre.

Music, songs and fighting in “Mayarap”

The theatre created by Joe Louis is as complex as any other great Asian stage expression.

According to the theory of master Joe Louis, and using the Thai terms, Hun lakhon lek is a sum of different arts:

- Hadtasin (puppet creation),
- Phraneedsin (puppet costumes),
- Nadtasin (puppet handling),
- Ketatsin (music),
- Mantanasin (stage and scenography arranging), and
- Hadtasin (the giving of life to the puppets)

Rama Dance at “Mayarap”

Hadtasin (or the giving of life to puppets) possesses in itself dark and strange aspects, involving certain rituals for achieving the soul of the puppet, like clapping thrice like in some religious Thai rituals, or performing a ritual for master Krea before the show, to placate his curse.

His puppet theatre began to be known and respected for its unrivaled beauty and its technical complexity, as well as for its originality. In 2004 Joe Louis’s company achieves, under the sponsorship of princess Galyani Vadhana, the title of Natttayasal, or “traditional”, and in 2006 it wins a world puppet theatre prize in Prague.

Joe Louis died in May 2007, leaving behind a theatre with a well established style, a “classical” style, and with an influence strong enough to be carried on. His strong presence shows that the creation of a traditional theatre, be it a puppet or a human theatre, has more to do with creative ability and the conjunction of a region’s arts that its creator manages, more than with an idea of the evolution of performing arts through time (8).

Video with a general view of the theatre of Joe Louis:

Videos provided by compulsivetraveler.tv

Joe Louis’s theatre as a touristic experience:

(1) My experience in Japan was blessed with, besides the performances I saw, a demonstration of the movements and the basic structure of this kind of theatre, with images of such magic and masterful handling of a dramatic climax that they’ve been burned into my memory.
(2) I’m referring to the puppet theatre that uses three-dimensional puppets, and my statements should not be taken as referring to shadow theatre.
(3) Some might object my appraisal of Bunraku as a point of reference for technical quality when it comes to puppet theatres, due to the existence of Chinese puppet theatres.
The puppet theatres of Mainland China, though still alive, exist within a chaos created by modernisation and the heritage of the cultural revolution of the 1960’s and 1970’s; the technique has been handed down, yes, but cleanliness and quality have almost disappeared through time. The theatres of this new China have either modernized or stagnated, quality (from my point of view) has been lost, there is some tradition left as continuity in some provincial towns and cities. There is still some beauty left, but technical development has stopped. In Mainland China there is no puppet theatre left with the complexity and technical quality that Beijing Opera or Kunqu have.
That is the reason I spoke of Bunraku; in Japan, Bunraku is a puppet theatre of the same quality level as Noh or Kabuki theatre.
If the Chinese puppet theatre is the origin of all traditional theatre in China, then, from my point of view, the living origin has been lost.
(4) Among the pieces presented at the famous Suan Lum Night Bazaar (a night bazaar in Bangkok) there were “Mayarap”, “The myth of Rahoo and the moon eclipse”; for 2008 they were preparing “The birth of Ganesha”, but I’m not sure if it’s already on or not.
(5) Japanese researcher Yamashita, who has studied Joe Louis’s theatre, holds that its main contribution is the modernising of the Thai puppet theatre while maintaining tradition (which would set it apart from Bunraku, which in 100 years hasn’t changed or modernised)). This “modernisation” is based on points that could be somewhat dangerous: you can see it in the use of certain stage effects like video and animation, and some extravagant colouring on mythical monsters; the performance allows itself some comical ad-lib and, at the end of the show, there is some playful interaction with the public. I have called them dangerous because of our idea of respect for tradition but, in the theatre of Joe Louis, created 20 years ago with elements from Thai stage culture, can we still call it a tradition in the sense of a continuous evolution in direct contact with its past? up to what point will these modern contributions turn the theatre into a lower quality product? We don’t know yet.
(6) Even though they’re called small puppets, many of the original ones were more than 1 metre tall.
(7) The name Hun Lakhon is actually a version of Lakhon dance for small puppets. Lakhon is a kind of dance-theatre with its origin in military dances, with martial arts movements, which evolved in its fusion with religion with very stylised drama-dances which culminated in the creation of a dramatic-performing genre called Khon, the famous dance-theatre of Thailand. And so Hun Lakhon is Khon theatre with its base on Lakhon dance and performed with small sized puppets.
(8) Surin Yangkhiaosot, one of the children of Khru Sakhon, said: “we’re trying to communicate universally to the public of Hun Lakhon Lek the same way ballet does, telling a story and bringing the most emotional effect possible to the audience by using a minimum of verbal language”.

A Religious Spectacle at Puning Temple Theatre in Chengde

Continuing with my experiences as a spectator in Chengde, China, I must stop a little bit and share with all of you one spectacle I considered of poor quality but curious.

As a religious tourist sight, Puning Temple is surrounded by many attractions: an old style Qing Dynasty Street, Vegetarian Restaurants (this temple is Buddhist), the royal park with those imitations of important Chinese temples, and one theatre showing a special religious spectacle.

All around the Goddess Kuanyin and her many arms (there is a gigantic statue of her inside the temple) this spectacle shows many rituals and religious dances with a common link, the Chinese emperor who built Chengde as a Imperial Summer Palace centuries ago.

It is a singular production using religion and history, trivializing them, and becoming a simple entertainment.

As I've seen in many other productions in China, they used "play back", then absolutely nobody spoke in real time; their music was spectacular, using chorus and big orchestras, and of course in this case, the whole group of known mantras and sounds of Buddhist instruments.

It is a curiosity and I liked to share it also, you can explore a little bit of it in these two videos I could recorded.