The First Asian-American Puppet Impact Forum
SUN Dong
2022 Asian/American Puppet Impact Forum Video
Chinese Theatre Works (CTW), the Chinese Oral and Performing Literature (CHINOPERL), Renwen Society at China Institute, and Center for Theater Arts Collaboration (CTAC) at SUNY Binghamton hosted an online forum, “Asian-American Puppet Impact” at 7 p. m. EDT on June 13, 2022.
This forum was first presented at the State University of Connecticut for students of the Puppetry Arts program. In order to bring this discussion to a wider range of public, CTW, together with the other three host organizations decided to invite the same line up of panelists to share with a global audience their cultural heritage and intercultural exchanges in Asia and in America.
The forum was moderated by Dr. Sun Dong, professor from Nanjing University of Finance and Economics. The participating artists are Simon Wong from Ming Ri Institute for Arts Education (Hong Kong), Chia-yin Cheng from Puppets and Its Double (Taiwan), Maria Tri Sulistyani from Paper Moon Puppet Theater (Indonesia), Spica Wobbe from Double Image Puppet Lab (NYC), and Kuang-yu Fong and Stephen Kaplin from Chinese Theatre Works (NYC.) Many artists, teachers, cultural workers, and audience who are interested in puppetry participated in this forum and interacted with panel of artists.
To open the forum, Professor Fan Pen Chan, the board member of both CTW and CHINOPERL and Professor Zuyan Chen, the director of CTAC, welcomed and introduced the participating artists and organizations and gave congratulatory remarks to the forum. Stephen Kaplin and Kuang-Yu Fong, the co-artistic directors of CTW introduced the context and the goal of the forum. Revolving around the theme of “Cultural Influences and Impacts,” each artistic group then presented a 15-minute video, showcasing their past achievements and their unique perspectives on puppetry creation and performance. Their videos highlighted in one way or another, their hybrid cultural influences and intercultural exchanges.
MingRi Institute for Arts Education is the first professional children’s theatre in Hong Kong. Established in 1984, by Simon Wong, it has been devoted to children theater production and drama education. Since 2009, MingRi has become the Venue Partner of Tsun Wan Town Hall. They have succeeded in entertaining, training and helping children in Hong Kong and other parts of China with their arts. The founder of MingRi, Simon Wong also serves as the secretary general of Asian Alliance of Festivals and Theatres for Young Audiences and the Director of UNIMA-China Centre. Since the 1990s, Wong and other MingRi artists took several trips to America, where they visited many children’s theaters and had great exchanges with American artists. These experiences had inspired their professional choices and innovations. Over the years, they have attended various international festivals and received many awards.
The Puppet and Its Double Theatre, founded in September 1999, is a distinctive group of Contemporary Taiwanese Theatre that crosses many boundaries. It is dedicated to an experimental approach and a belief that all possible things can be formed into puppet Arts. The company runs the Lize Puppet Art Colony as an artistic home and professional base for a core team of performers, designers, theatre artists and technicians. TPAIDT has also been unwavering in its efforts to nurture new talents and local content, through such platforms as the Lize International Puppet Festival and the Lize Artists in Residence. The founder and director, Chia-yin Cheng and her company have received numerous invitations to international Arts/Puppet festivals and have travelled and presented in 15 counties all over the world. These intercultural exchanges offered them more chances of collaborate internationally and inspires to challenges them to break boundaries in puppetry at home.
Spica Wobbe founded Double Image Theater Lab in 2011 to create cross-cultural productions that explore the world of the past and the present though object and light manipulation, music, dance and poetry. Spica received her puppetry education through practice and learning from practitioners. She has been involved in many projects and performances in Taiwan, New York and other parts of the world, and has won numerous grants and awards for artistic creation and education.
Papermoon Puppet Theatre was founded in April 2006 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia by Co-Artistic Directors, Maria Tri Sulistyani (Ria) and Iwan Effendi. Ria has nurtured, developed, and expanded the company together with Director Iwan Effendi, who is a visual artist and Papermoon’s puppet designer. To date, PPT. has created more than 30 puppet performances, visual art installations and exhibitions, and has toured to more than 10 countries. They have also hosted artist residency programs and workshops regularly. They believe that puppet theater is a bridge between different arts and people. In 2008, Paper Puppet Theater launched “Pesta Boneka,” an international puppet biennale that welcomes puppeteers from around the world to Indonesia, where they can share their work in a community setting.
Chinese Theatre Workshop was founded in 1995 with the mission of preserving and promoting traditional Chinese performing arts and creating new theater productions that bridge Eastern and Western, traditional and contemporary theatrical practices and forms. In 2001, CTW merged with the Gold Mountain Institute for Traditional Shadow Theater (founded by Jo Humphrey in 1975) to create Chinese Theatre Works. Located in Queens, one of the most ethnically diverse places on Earth, CTW’s work cuts across ethnic and cultural boundaries and invents new ways of linking artists and audiences, locally, nationally and globally. CTW has supported a cohort of Chinese opera artists who came to NYC from China in the late ‘90s and have become core troupe members in CTW’s opera, music, puppet and original multi-disciplinary productions. Since the Pandemic hit in 2020, CTW coped with the abrupt shifts in the cultural and social ecologies by producing and hosting a range of online programs, workshops, forums and slams. These helped to knit together suddenly fractured and isolated global audiences and artists.
The panel discussions not only covered each organization’s achievements in the fields of puppetry, they also touched on the new global developments in intercultural communications and shed light on other related areas such as education and training. Their videos demonstrate the many different strategies possible for merging their own artistic endeavors with those of participating artists and communities. The Forum audience were very impressed by their artistic achievements and the explorations they have made across boundaries of disciplines, making creative use out of every possible means. In response to some audiences’ questions, Simon Wong and Stephen Kaplin talked about how their projects have been integrated with local public educational system. The audience also asked about the inspirations and influences that these artists have gotten from their predecessors in puppetry. In their closing remarks, the two co-artistic directors at CTW Kuang-Yu Fong and Stephen Kaplin envisioned a future of puppetry theater within and outside NYC. They hope that their works and creations will inspire more young artists to puppetry creation.
In the past years, CTW’s speaker series and forums on Chinese opera have been recognized for their encouragement of new artists and enhancement of art cohorts in New York as well as in other parts of the world. The First International Forum on Puppetry provided a space for puppeteers, researchers, educators and industry to come together across generations, to share and learn from each other, and to advance rigorous inquiry into various aspects of puppetry. In so doing, they become part of a broader hybrid community, who identify themselves with multiple roles and cultural origins.
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