A Taiwanese Glove Puppet Game of Thrones
It's rare that a puppet show earns a mature audiences recommended rating, but there is precedent. Peter Jackson's infamous (pre-Lord of the Rings) puppet classic Meet the Feebles springs to mind.
Like Game of Thrones. But in Taiwan. With Puppets.
When we got the invitation to see a Taiwanese Glove Puppet show called Mystery of The Great Mind Ocean (Chinese: 心海迷蹤), we had no idea what to expect. We'd been invited months ago, when we were last in Tainan, and as Taiwanese Potehi, or glove puppets, have become a fairly big chunk of what Stephanie loves about Taiwan (as well as the subject she's hoping to study in Graduate school), we were looking forward to the performance enough to schedule a leg of our book research around the performance dates.
Though we'd already explored Tainan, we were on our way to Kaohsiung, so thought we'd take a pit stop. Over the last two months we've seen other Potehi performances, including a fairly elaborate children's story in March at the Yunlin Glove Puppet Museum.
None of these puppet based activities prepared us for Mystery of The Great Mind Ocean, which was amazingly multilayered, complex, laden with history, beautifully performed, and surprisingly mature for a puppet show.
I'll let Stephanie describe the action. (Interjections in black are mine)
We entered the temple and were treated to front row seats. The audience had to sit on small plastic stools. Since we were sitting in front of a temple the sky was over our heads. The show had video screens on either side of the stage with Chinese and English subtitles. The show was performed in Taiwanese with a smattering of English.
A human narrator introduced us to the play's subject matter. A young man He Bin was the protagonist, and the opening sequence introduces him, his love interest (a comely young puppet woman), his grandmother and kid brother, a boy named Buddy. But the bucolic scene is short lived, as a tax collector comes to collect payment. A fight ensued, in which the grandmother is shot, and in order to pay the debt, He Bin's love interest was hauled away to a brothel. ( A puppet brothel ...on an unrelated note "Puppet Brothel" is a good band name, don't you think?)
Swearing revenge, He Bin decides that power is the best revenge, and leaves to seek his fortune, obeying his grandmother's dying wishes to protect his brother. The two set out on an ocean voyage, and are soon set upon by a pirate who offers He Bin the opportunity to join the crew, after passing a loyalty test.
The test? Murdering his own kid brother. This proves surprisingly easy for He Bin, who literally throws the kid into the raging sea. (If you've never seen a big puppet hurl a smaller puppet downstage into a rolling ocean of paper waves, it's quite unique.)
So He Bin, having murdered his brother, becomes a pirate for awhile, joining a group of Dutch puppets with very cool hair. Over the course of time he becomes fluent in Dutch, allowing him to climb the ranks of colonialist enforcer for the next ten years.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in Southern Taiwan a group of Tribal puppets, sick of being bossed around and otherwise maltreated by the Dutch (puppets) decide to murder a few of their hated foreign puppet overlords. ("Foreign Puppet Overlords" - another great band name!)
Having been hired to carry a group of Dutch explorers across a raging river piggyback, they instead beat and drown them at the halfway point, stealing their weapons in the process. The Dutch then murder an entire tribe in retribution.
(For those keeping score, we've now got implied sex slavery, one on stage child-murder, a few drownings and a mini-genocide happening. And we're not even at intermission.)
One family goes into hiding, disguising themselves as farmers not aligned with the tribal group who'd been murdered. The father is wracked with guilt. Eventually He Bin shows up, now working as translator for the Dutch, who have now returned to collect tax payments. An argument over taxation and land rights ensues.
(OK, this part got confusing...nuances may have been lost in translation.)
While translating for the Dutch, He Bin convinces the family that he's on their side, and wants to work out an arrangement that will allow them to continue living on their land unmolested. Using his knowledge of Dutch colonial law, he has a contract drawn up that allows him to take over the family's debt in exchange for their acting as sort of temporary indentured servants. The family signs gladly, thanking He Bin profusely.
It was at this point that both Josh and I were thinking, "ah, that He Bin isn't such a bad guy after all."
(Yup. But wait for it.)
Surprise! Actually, He Bin had tricked them into signing over their house and land to him entirely. The dad puts up a fight, and gets shot. So does the mother. Then, just for fun, he has the house burned down in front of the rest of the family before having them thrown into slavery, because, why not?
(I was confused at this plot point, which again, may have been a translation issue, since He Bin, now being owner of the house, just burned his own house down. That said, if you've never seen a puppet house go up in flames, its quite the sight! The troupe used a series of colored streamers on the set, as well as smoke machines. It was AWESOME!)
He Bin's position as a genuinely not nice person now cemented, he continues amassing wealth and power as an agent for the Dutch. This was all before the intermission, and I won't go much further because to do so would require spoiler alerts, and Josh has already announced his firm intention to do whatever he can to help bring Mystery of The Great Mind Ocean to a wider audience. (Once we've turned Formosa Moon into the publisher).
There was more business in the puppet whorehouse, a surprisingly frank talk about the practice of foot-binding, a more than cameo appearance by the great Ming Dynasty admiral Koxinga, a revenge plot worthy of Shakespeare, and, as if this play couldn't be any more unique, a distinctly meta episode in which beautifully costumed human actors fought on either side of the audience while the play's characters (again, these are puppets we're talking about) just sat watching the show, effectively watching the audience watching the side play. (Rosencranz and Puppetstern are dead?)
Suffice to say, a great time was had by all, except maybe the kid sitting next to us, who may have been a tad young to fully grasp the implications of the awesomeness that is Mystery of The Great Mind Ocean. We'll be encouraging Huang Guan-wei (founder of the Goodoo Puppet Troupe) to bring the show to Taipei, and will be including both a write-up of the show and the troupe in our book.
In the meantime, you can get more details about Goodoo Puppet Theater on Facebook and at their website, http://www.goodoo.studio
Like Game of Thrones. But in Taiwan. With Puppets.When we got the invitation to see a Taiwanese Glove Puppet show called Mystery of The Great Mind Ocean (Chinese: 心海迷蹤), we had no idea what to expect. We'd been invited months ago, when we were last in Tainan, and as Taiwanese Potehi, or glove puppets, have become a fairly big chunk of what Stephanie loves about Taiwan (as well as the subject she's hoping to study in Graduate school), we were looking forward to the performance enough to schedule a leg of our book research around the performance dates.
Though we'd already explored Tainan, we were on our way to Kaohsiung, so thought we'd take a pit stop. Over the last two months we've seen other Potehi performances, including a fairly elaborate children's story in March at the Yunlin Glove Puppet Museum.
None of these puppet based activities prepared us for Mystery of The Great Mind Ocean, which was amazingly multilayered, complex, laden with history, beautifully performed, and surprisingly mature for a puppet show.
I'll let Stephanie describe the action. (Interjections in black are mine)
We entered the temple and were treated to front row seats. The audience had to sit on small plastic stools. Since we were sitting in front of a temple the sky was over our heads. The show had video screens on either side of the stage with Chinese and English subtitles. The show was performed in Taiwanese with a smattering of English.
A human narrator introduced us to the play's subject matter. A young man He Bin was the protagonist, and the opening sequence introduces him, his love interest (a comely young puppet woman), his grandmother and kid brother, a boy named Buddy. But the bucolic scene is short lived, as a tax collector comes to collect payment. A fight ensued, in which the grandmother is shot, and in order to pay the debt, He Bin's love interest was hauled away to a brothel. ( A puppet brothel ...on an unrelated note "Puppet Brothel" is a good band name, don't you think?)
Swearing revenge, He Bin decides that power is the best revenge, and leaves to seek his fortune, obeying his grandmother's dying wishes to protect his brother. The two set out on an ocean voyage, and are soon set upon by a pirate who offers He Bin the opportunity to join the crew, after passing a loyalty test.
The test? Murdering his own kid brother. This proves surprisingly easy for He Bin, who literally throws the kid into the raging sea. (If you've never seen a big puppet hurl a smaller puppet downstage into a rolling ocean of paper waves, it's quite unique.)
So He Bin, having murdered his brother, becomes a pirate for awhile, joining a group of Dutch puppets with very cool hair. Over the course of time he becomes fluent in Dutch, allowing him to climb the ranks of colonialist enforcer for the next ten years.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in Southern Taiwan a group of Tribal puppets, sick of being bossed around and otherwise maltreated by the Dutch (puppets) decide to murder a few of their hated foreign puppet overlords. ("Foreign Puppet Overlords" - another great band name!)
Having been hired to carry a group of Dutch explorers across a raging river piggyback, they instead beat and drown them at the halfway point, stealing their weapons in the process. The Dutch then murder an entire tribe in retribution.
(For those keeping score, we've now got implied sex slavery, one on stage child-murder, a few drownings and a mini-genocide happening. And we're not even at intermission.)
One family goes into hiding, disguising themselves as farmers not aligned with the tribal group who'd been murdered. The father is wracked with guilt. Eventually He Bin shows up, now working as translator for the Dutch, who have now returned to collect tax payments. An argument over taxation and land rights ensues.
(OK, this part got confusing...nuances may have been lost in translation.)
While translating for the Dutch, He Bin convinces the family that he's on their side, and wants to work out an arrangement that will allow them to continue living on their land unmolested. Using his knowledge of Dutch colonial law, he has a contract drawn up that allows him to take over the family's debt in exchange for their acting as sort of temporary indentured servants. The family signs gladly, thanking He Bin profusely.
It was at this point that both Josh and I were thinking, "ah, that He Bin isn't such a bad guy after all."
(Yup. But wait for it.)
Surprise! Actually, He Bin had tricked them into signing over their house and land to him entirely. The dad puts up a fight, and gets shot. So does the mother. Then, just for fun, he has the house burned down in front of the rest of the family before having them thrown into slavery, because, why not?
(I was confused at this plot point, which again, may have been a translation issue, since He Bin, now being owner of the house, just burned his own house down. That said, if you've never seen a puppet house go up in flames, its quite the sight! The troupe used a series of colored streamers on the set, as well as smoke machines. It was AWESOME!)
He Bin's position as a genuinely not nice person now cemented, he continues amassing wealth and power as an agent for the Dutch. This was all before the intermission, and I won't go much further because to do so would require spoiler alerts, and Josh has already announced his firm intention to do whatever he can to help bring Mystery of The Great Mind Ocean to a wider audience. (Once we've turned Formosa Moon into the publisher).
There was more business in the puppet whorehouse, a surprisingly frank talk about the practice of foot-binding, a more than cameo appearance by the great Ming Dynasty admiral Koxinga, a revenge plot worthy of Shakespeare, and, as if this play couldn't be any more unique, a distinctly meta episode in which beautifully costumed human actors fought on either side of the audience while the play's characters (again, these are puppets we're talking about) just sat watching the show, effectively watching the audience watching the side play. (Rosencranz and Puppetstern are dead?)
Suffice to say, a great time was had by all, except maybe the kid sitting next to us, who may have been a tad young to fully grasp the implications of the awesomeness that is Mystery of The Great Mind Ocean. We'll be encouraging Huang Guan-wei (founder of the Goodoo Puppet Troupe) to bring the show to Taipei, and will be including both a write-up of the show and the troupe in our book.
In the meantime, you can get more details about Goodoo Puppet Theater on Facebook and at their website, http://www.goodoo.studio
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