Description
Target Audience: All ages and family
Duration: 90 minutes
Synopsis
4 Different solo puppet performances. Taking place in different parts of the space. The audiences will move from one performance to another.
Hungry Mouse In The House by Wang Hua Ching, from Taiwan.
Duration: 20 mins
Wu Dong Dong Adventure Playground by Chow Hiu Man from Hong Kong.
Duration: 20 mins
Good For You by Tang Beier from Malaysia
Duration: 20 mins
Kangaroo Mama Wakes Up by Meng-Ju YU from Taiwan
Duration: 15 mins
Premiered in July 2024 as part of Lize Puppet Arts Colony, International Academy of Puppetry Arts.
Company Profile
Established in 1999, the Puppet & Its Double Theatre is dedicated to an experimental approach and the belief that all conceivable subjects can be represented through puppetry, thereby exploring the diverse possibilities of this art form within contemporary performance. Through professional and nuanced puppetry skills, innovative design, and poetic stage presentations, the company conjures an imaginative realm that transcends the limitations of human performance alone. Due to its exceptional merit, the group has garnered numerous invitations to perform at international art festivals and has been repeatedly shortlisted for the prestigious Taishin Arts Award. Recognized for its outstanding uniqueness, the Puppet and Its Double has been selected as the TAIWAN TOP performing groups for years.
Artist Profile
Wang Hua Ching, Graduated from the Department of Drama at the National Taiwan University of Arts, Hua Ching specializes in teaching puppet arts and puppet performance. Hua Ching has always loved performing but was afraid of the nakedness of performing on stage. It was not until she joined Puppet and Its Double Theater Company that she was introduced to puppetry, and realized that she would never be lonely again with puppets to accompany her on stage, and that they were the perfect balance in performance. She is fascinated by the magic of contemporary puppetry that gives life to inanimate objects! She loves the intentional blankness and poetic aesthetics of puppetry. It gives her a gentle strength to face the world.
Chow Hiu Man (Abbu) has been involved in stage production since 2014, starting with the production of stage props and gradually delving deeper into the field. It was 2016 when she first encountered puppetry coincidentally. The process of transforming various materials from inanimate objects into living entities filled her with both surprise and warmth. For her, being able to participate in and witness the birth of puppets, which are small yet full of emotion, serves as the driving force that motivates her to continue exploring.
Tang Beier, graduated from the Department of Arts Management, Shu-Te University. During the internship at Puppet and Its Double in 2020, Tang developed a passion for puppet management, storage and maintenance, believing that every puppet deserves to be stored comfortably, and that storage management and basic maintenance will allow puppets to have a longer lifespan. Currently working as a production assistant and puppet manager for the company, Tang has gradually expanded the role to that of a puppeteer in recent years. Tang fully embraced the spirit of a puppet manager by designing a mobile stage that extends from a suitcase in the first production. As the storage scene unfolds, the audience is drawn into the world of the play.
Meng-Ju YU, specializes in metal arts and mixed media sculpture. She graduated with a master’s degree in jewelry and metal arts from the Graduate Institute of Applied Arts, Tainan National University of Arts. Since her creative practices often involve liveliness and mechanical structures, she began to pay attention to puppetry, which has similar characteristics. Since joining the Puppet and Its Double Theater Company in 2017, Yu has worked as a puppet designer and builder, inventing various puppetry techniques and mechanisms. Yu is also an instructor at the Lize International Academy of Puppet Arts.
Ruan Yi (Director Mentor)
Yi Ruan graduated from the Department of Drama Creation and Application, National University of Tainan. Since 2014, he has been working as an actor, puppet designer, playwright, and director in the Puppet and Its Double Theater Company. In recent years, Ruan has turned his rich experience in puppetry into educational programs, adapting them to different occasions, such as community theater, giant puppet parade, puppet-making and puppeteering workshops, and creative workshops with young artists, to name a few. He is currently involved in the curriculum design of the Lize International Academy of Puppet Arts, planning a series of professional puppet artist cultivation and training programs.
