Puppetry, one of China’s intangible cultural heritages, is deemed as the ancestor of dramas by many historians in the long history of Chinese drama. Recently, a workshop was held in Xuzhou to showcase three different types of puppetries. Let’s take a close look.
The 2018 Puppetry Summer Art Curriculum, initiated by Meeting Puppetry Workshop, came to a close recently. Three representative puppet shows, shadow Puppet, glove puppetry and rod puppetry, thrilled teenagers who not only learned and experienced traditional culture here, but also enjoyed their summer pastime. Meeting Puppetry Workshop, founded by Liu Yu’er, a puppet enthusiast, aims at protecting and propagating the memory of the traditional puppet heritage. More wonderful activities will entertain the puppetry enthusiasts in the near future.
Puppetry is a form of theatre or performance that involves the manipulation of puppets – inanimate objects, often resembling some types of human or animal figures that are animated or manipulated by a human called a puppeteer. Such a performance is also known as a puppet play. The puppeteer uses movements of her hands, arms, or control devices such as rods or strings to move the body, head, limbs, and in some cases the mouth and eyes of the puppet. The puppeteer often speaks in the voice of the character of the puppet, and then synchronizes the movements of the puppet's mouth with this spoken part. The actions, gestures and spoken parts acted out by the puppets are typically used in storytelling.
