Droomtheater projecten

Droomtheater Collaboration

Chinese shadow puppetry has been one of the main forms transmitting oral history of the peasant class for nearly two thousand years. In its evolution from primitive leaf silhouettes to intricately carved and codified leather shadow puppets, the form has spread to nearly every corner of the country. When encountering shadow puppetry, most observers are left with the indelible imagery of the colorful puppets and the raucous music not the subtler lessons that a time-tested art form might be telling us. For underneath all the spectacle is a simple folk art form who’s main purpose was to bond communities and pass on its cultural heritage to the next generation.

Today, Chinese shadow puppetry is struggling to keep its footing in an ever-increasingly modern China. As a researcher and practitioner of the form, I am constantly torn between the desire to preserve or evolve and usually land somewhere in between. This November, I am working in Rotterdam, Netherlands with local theatre and community artists, Droomtheater, to dig deeper into this inquiries.

I first met Joanne Oussoren and Frans Hakkemars of Droomtheater in Hong Kong, where we had gathered for Mingri Theatre Company’s Puppetry in Education conference. There, we quickly found ourselves in heavy conversations about these very same thoughts of traditions, cultural heritage and the possible options moving forward. As community artists working often in their own neighborhoods, they saw the added complication of these questions when working with newer intercultural immigrant populations. We went our separate ways, looking for future ways to put our questions into practice.

Fast forward to November 2012, we find ourselves teaching shadow puppetry, in a simplified Chinese shadow style, around the city of Rotterdam to engage children of all demographics in the first stages of shadow puppet theatre creation. Joanne and Frans have created a program to fully involve the children of Feijnoord in a cultural story important to Holland: Sinterklaas and his carnival of animals. They begin with shadow puppet design and creation, then rehearsal and finally a performance for the community. By letting the children become apart of every step of the process, we believe that this will deepen the embodiment of the work and enrich the learning experience.

Epilogue

As an American shadow puppeteer researching traditional Chinese shadow puppetry, I found the experience of teaching simplified Chinese shadow puppet in a new arena completely educational and exhilarating. The children were both engaged and inquisitive and surprised us with their focus and quality of work. It was clear, after completing 3 workshops in all areas of the city that the community demographic really does influence both the way in which children work and their understanding of cultural inheritance. In some ways, you could conclude that the neighborhoods with a higher new immigrant population are more keenly aware of culture versus a native or assimilated population. When one is displaced from home and belonging, one tends to hold onto their native culture with a different reverence than at home. However, as new immigrants, many children were not as familiar with our chosen subject, the Sinterklaas tale, as the more assimilated or native children were. Because of this unfamiliarity, the project was most effective in this area – both reiterating the importance of one’s own cultural inheritance and introducing them to their new country’s own heritage.

I was also extremely encouraged to exchange ideas and questions with the Droomtheater company, Joanne and Frans, as community artists and natural inquisitors. We contrasted and compared our relative experience through the work in our home countries, respectively, and learned through each other’s different perspectives. We both agree that this question of one’s cultural heritage is becoming more important that one’s geographical location as the world’s populations become more and more mobile and transient. It is becoming increasingly important for us to recognize, safeguard and promote the evolutionary continuum of our own personal, community and national cultural inheritances. Each individual must determine for themselves what is the most important to them to pass on.

I look forward to our next collaboration and further conversations which will push the work of puppetry, community arts and intercultural collaborations forward through the living arts.