an international puppetry/music collaboration.

This distance performance installation draws on the spiritual connection between the human world and our natural environment.

We witness an artist, seeking the unknowable, encounter the growing bamboo and tree, whose harvested material is crafted into the artistry of the flute and the puppet.

Japanese kuruma ningy style puppetry and multiple, illuminated shadow scrolls play out this wordless tale to the accompaniment of taiko drums, shamisen and shakuhachi flute.

The work is created by Tom Lee with Blair Thomas, Perry Yung, Ralph Samuelson, Koryu Nishikawa V, Tatsu Aoki, Kioto Aoki, KT Shivak, Mark Blashford, Jaerin Son and Jerell Henderson.

Artist Profile

Tom Lee is a puppet artist, designer and director from Hawai’i. His work explores Asian puppetry forms, miniatures, and performing objects in dialogue with the language of film and animation. His collaboration with Japanese master puppeteer Koryu Nishikawa V, Shank’s Mare, has toured the U.S., Japan and France. Mr. Lee was a puppeteer in the original Broadway cast of War Horse and has performed with the Metropolitan Opera (Madame Butterfly), Lyric Opera of Chicago (Queen of Spades), Dan Hurlin (Hiroshima Maiden, Disfarner, Demolishing Everything with Amazing Speed).

He designed puppetry for the adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s Wind Up Bird Chronicle and is co-director of the Chicago Puppet Studio. (www.tomleeprojects.com)