Unima Australia

Unima Meetings and Asia-Pacific Report, November 2005

The following report was written by Jennie Pfeiffer for November, for the current /coming copy of Australian Puppeteer Magazine.

Home again. The time in Europe and India fairly flew. This column is a brief summary of my journey and in the coming issues I will have more encounters, and experiences to tell of. Whilst away I attended a UNIMA Festivals Commission meeting, as guest, at the Materinka Puppet Festival in Liberec, Czech Republic. The Commission has prepared a document based upon past UNIMA Congress/Festivals, and contains simple and sage advice for Congress organisers on the practical nuts and bolts of coordinating the event to make it the well oiled machine we all expect to be. Above and beyond the festivals commission Materinka was a wonderful opportunity to meet festival programmers and organisers from all over the world, who were also guests at this festival. They were very generous in sharing their advice and knowledge of what makes a festival successful and run smoothly. And of course, it was a great opportunity to fire them up with enthusiasm to visit Australia in 2008, to anticipate the lively and diverse work of Australian puppeteers and our Asian regional colleagues. The Materinka festival itself was well-established, presenting predominantly works for children, and a treat to see so much eastern European work in concentrated sittings. More in future issues about some of the wonders, including a profile of a talented young puppeteer, Matija Solce, already acclaimed in Europe, and whom I predict we will all come to know as a Master. I must also mention Theatre Anpu, an exciting experimental visual and puppet theatre that I managed to see in Prague. Performing on the Forman Brother’s barge, “Mystery” tied up at the Vltava River, their blend of energetic actor’s theatre with traditional Czech string marionettes was enthralling, their stagecraft and timing superb. Petr Forman, of the Forman Brothers, was one of the performers in a shifting ensemble of players/puppeteers. They tour extensively and I was fortunate to have caught a performance at the distinctive barge of renown, a floating performance space-come club. This was a version of Romeo and Julia/et that was hilarious: bawdy, ribald, and earthy, perhaps as Shakespeare intended. I would never have guessed that these small and relatively simple traditional marionettes, 37cm high, could be so articulate. The Theatre Anpu website address is: www.anpu.cz

The UNIMA Executive meeting was held in Sibenic Croatia at the Children’s Festival. In its final stages by the time we arrived and not exclusively for puppetry, we did not see any puppet performances to speak of. An organisational issue created some mini-dramas and its playing out was a warning that one small thing can potentially throw a coordinated set of plans out, and off schedule. At the meeting itself I encountered (and participated in) vigorous debate with the UNIMA World Encyclopaedia of Puppetry Arts a hefty agenda item. An enormous tome, it is now within reach of being finished, and courting publishers continues. We all want to see an end to the long development process and to free funds from the UNIMA annual budget. It is the French version in point, but contracts signed now will impact on both future (English) editions and royalties.

Speaking of copyright issues, I urge any artist contemplating international activity to become familiar with international copyright law, particularly in the Asian region. I predict the issue will heat up over the next few years. Many laws are already enacted in Australia, but different countries have different arrangements and treaties, which are being updated frequently as legislation struggles to keep pace with technology. That could impact on a range of activities. Australian’s have customarily had a lasse faire attitude towards such things. Many think that freely circulating images and other material is a positive act, and promotes artists. However, under “Fair Dealings”, it is a requirement that one both acknowledges the source of images, sound bytes or whatever the intellectual property is, and usually, to gain permission, in writing, which may or may not cost a fee. There are often particular stipulations pertaining to indigenous forms. Don’t be discouraged from cross-cultural activity, but I advise to become familiar for your own protection. Understand your rights and your obligations. See WIPO.

A word on the monies collected for Boxing Day Tsunami victims. Firstly, a huge thanks to Philip Millar, Sarah Kreigler and the puppeteers of Puppet Palaver. But there have been some issues requiring resolution before any monies can be distributed, and that is all I can say about it for now. When all is in order, we can direct people to where they can send the funds, and we expect to hear the details soon. People very generously donated from all over the world and numerous national centres are waiting for the go ahead.. Tardy, yes, but necessary, absolutely! In the meantime, I visited Mr Selvaraja just south of Chennai at his village on the coast. I can verify his damaged set of puppets, handed down through several family generations; I saw the watermarks on the walls, even through a new coat of paint. It must have been terrifying to have your home so suddenly immersed by ocean, not knowing when and if it would recede... He has received some assistance from a local cultural museum to replace a few of the puppets, and where he also performs a limited selection for tourists. I saw a small performance and he is indeed a talented fellow, his shadow puppets communicating easily through language barriers simple folktale excerpts from his classic repertoire, the comic segues in the longer epic tale. Mr Selveraja was also promised assistance from the Indian Govt body. His submission having been approved, up to the present he has still not received the expected help from them. I hope that Mr Selvaraja can also benefit from the generosity of puppeteers. He needs roughly the equivalent of $2000 AUS to completely re-establish. If Australians can help in some small way to keep him going long enough to wait out his Govt funds, we will have helped sustain a valuable artist. To hear more details of his situation or to help please contact me: jenpfei@optusnet.com.au or Mob: 0423243516.

(Several of Mr Selvaraja’s damaged puppets.  Click to enlarge.
Photograph by Jennie Pfeiffer)

A meeting scheduled in Bangkok at the regional office of UNESCO and I was to meet Thailand puppeteers. As happened, one was delayed in Chiang Mai and the other detained on a TV shoot. Ms Patravadi sent her marketing manager in proxy. The Patravadi Theatre is not strictly a puppetry company but is incorporating puppetry into their forthcoming production based on the Ramayana epic. This company is a hub of theatrical activity and cultural exchange. By blind luck, I was able to see some traditional Thai puppetry as the Joe Louis Theatre, which was featured on my Skytrain ticket. I searched them out, sent them an email and was cordially invited to attend the evening performance. They also introduced me to their marketing manager. Some may remember Joe Louis Theatre from their visit to Australia for the Sydney Olympics. The Hun Lakorn Lek style requires up to 3 puppeteers to articulate each puppet of around 1 metre high, operated in a realistic, or mimetic, fashion. A large ensemble, the company, under the guidance of Mr Sakorn (Joe Louis), revived a tradition that had languished for 50 years. They boast a sizeable theatre, shop and restaurant complex in the Night Bazaar. Their use of multi media, filmed sequences and projected backdrops was a novel and unexpected element to a traditional rendition. I was told that the repertory piece I saw was one of the less accessible plays for a western spectator, a parochial story of a famous Thai musician and his extraordinary rise to acclaim. Of course, it was also a romantic love story. I followed the program notes synopsis, which outlined the narrative, and I had no problem following it. There were some extraordinary sequences of puppets playing a traditional Thai instrument, which was a bamboo xylophone. These sequences elevated the performance to a quite mythological level. The puppeteers seemed to know as much about playing the instrument as any musician would have to. The illusion was effective and I found myself drawn into the climax of the play, a competition between musical masters at the behest of one of Thailand’s former kings.

Jennie Pfeiffer, 
Chair Asia-Pacific Commission, International Executive UNIMA

Jennie's trip was made possible with the assistance of the Australian Government via its advisory body the Australia Council for the Arts, and for which she is extremely grateful.

Asia Pacific News, September 2005 Report

The following Asia Pacific News is from Jennie Pfeiffer's September 2005 column.

(Photograph of Aakar Theater’s Swaajat reproduced with kind permission of Titirijai Festival, Tolosa, Spain and Puran Bhatt. Click to enlarge)

I write from New Delhi where days are steamy. It has taken a while to acclimatise to life here, and it seems that one has to learn to go with the flow as plans and arrangements can change on a daily basis. For instance, the Singapore Puppetry Festival, hence the Asia-Pacific Commission meeting postponed by organizers. I’m meeting many people, who on the whole, have expressed interest in Australian puppetry and support the notion of cross-cultural exchange. I think there are possibilities of realising such exchange over the next few years.

There is a lively arts scene and several key organisations that provide artists and audiences with events and functions to attend that range from: exhibitions, book launches, talks and seminars, film screenings, or performances: the India Habitat Centre and the India International Centre. One does keeps running into the same people. There is a separation however, and not unlike Oz it seems that there is a high/low divide and that classical works are favoured and readily find support, whilst new contemporary works, and certainly traditional folk forms, struggle. Puppetry is not considered one of the THE most significant artforms, not like classical dance for instance. In some instances support and incentive are available, and there are people and institutions that particularly show a great deal of concern for the traditional forms, especially when they are on the verge of extinction. 

One example is the Rajasthan string puppetry tradition. As a form it has unfortunately deteriorated over the years as global creep heads into the rural villages where the tradition has sustained itself for generations. As was explained to me, the practice of this puppetry is closely connected to the life, traditionally puppeteer families being nomads who travel from place to place where markets and festivals provide the audiences they need. They return to their homes for the wet season where they tend their farms to take care of the yearly food supply. Of more recent decades a number of processes have been at work. Puppetry performances have lost audiences for want of sustained interest and competition with cinema and TV. The economy and way of life has changed seeing migration towards city centres in search of sustaining work.

The style has a repertoire that for many generations remained relatively unchanged and having seen it, the question begs: how many times can the same repertoire maintain an audience, particularly if one is now anchored to a set location and community? Over time this has led to a deterioration that has shifted the craft from one of a performance tradition into a ‘making a living’ from carving cheap quick puppets for sale on the street to tourists, items not well suited to performance and losing much of the rich detail of the performance puppets. Carvers, from 12-13 year old boys who are new to puppets and upwards to those who are more experienced and still know something of the performances, can knock out 50-60 puppets a day. Still it’s a living.

However, there is one man from a long line of Rajasthani puppeteers who is almost single handedly changing the map. Puran Bhatt has five sons and three daughters. I haven’t asked him how old he is, but I suspect he is around 50yrs. He is a Master puppeteer in the Rajasthani style. He studied from masters, Mohan Lalbhat in manipulation and Naurang Lalbhat for carving. Many say that he has surpassed his gurus.

I attended a weeklong workshop held at, organised and hosted by the Sangeet Natak Akademi in association with Puran Bhatt. 

The purpose of the workshop was to bring two venerable Master puppeteers, one a manipulator, the other a puppet-carver from Rajasthan [Nagaur] and enable them to teach the finer points of the craft to 35 tourist market carvers from various Rajasthan locations and elsewhere, even from within Delhi. The outcome of this workshop was to narrow the field down to 12 potential string puppeteers who will be rewarded with continued intensive support for training and development over the following months in making, manipulation, and music. This may continue up to 12 months when it is hoped that productions will be the outcome. 

Beyond training the basics of this form Puran is continually reinventing it. His work since the eighties, commenced with an enterprising program of workshops in Rajasthan facilitated by Zazie Hayom, Theatre en Tete, with French funding for French artists and continued over a series of seasons. Combined with his long association of work with Dadi Pudumjee, this has enabled him to travel outside of India. He has given workshops and performances in Europe, and gained insights into all manner of theatrical forms. He has absorbed these influences and uses them at will to create new forms of expression for the traditional puppets and characters, expanded the repertoire into new puppet plays and operas, something that had never occurred previously in the Rajasthan traditional style. The stories he tells are of “another era when Rajasthan was a kingdom ruled by Amarsingh Radhore, a hero for the puppeteers”.

Additionally, Puran has also reinvented the presentation of the form. He has modified the ‘trad rep’, which was confined to a booth on the street and a limited number of set routines: dancing girl, snake charmer, magician, horse and rider into variations that allow the manipulators to be in full view, to have a whole chorus line of dancing girls and to invent new string puppet characters, such as a very entertaining singing camel that appears in Dhola Maru, one of the most famous Rajisthani romantic ballads. It is an ‘Arabian Nights-like’ court tale.

Puran himself is quite the showman and a wonderfully warm and friendly person. He lives in Kathputli colony, (Kathputli meaning wood puppet), which is a particular community of relocated or displaced puppeteers from Rajasthan and elsewhere, the ‘forgotten artists’. Until fairly recently it existed as a tent city, and while buildings have since appeared, it is a rowdy crowded place with quite primitive living conditions by western standards. The first time I visited, having navigated my way to the colony by auto-rickshaw, finding Puran’s house was a challenge, the place being a maze of narrow laneways, shanties and walls. The mention of Puran’s name, however, was enough and I found ready escorts, although I must say trust went a long way here, as I could have been led anywhere and would have been none the wiser. There was a complete language barrier.

I spend the afternoon with family members, relations, babies, kittens, with mobile phones competing for attention, sharing computer displays of DVDs of work. I felt a welcome guest and I know that I would always have a place to go to in Delhi as long as Aakaar Theater and the Bhatts are around.

There is much to tell of my journey. My experiences have been as diverse and contradictory as Delhi is reputed to be, moments when I have wondered what possessed me to come here, and moments when I could consider living here. Over coming issues and through the UNIMA website, I look forward to sharing more. 

Jennie Pfeiffer, 
Chair Asia-Pacific Commission, International Executive UNIMA
August 2005

Jennie's work is assisted by the Australian Government via its advisory body the Arts Council of Australia

Andrew Hansen – Asialink Residency, February-June, 2004

Australian puppeteers acknowledge and even celebrate our lack of traditions. We see traditional puppetry from outside Australia, absorb influences, adapt them and adopt them. Traditional foreign puppet styles are combined with new materials and technologies, subjected to fad and fashion. As an Australian puppeteer I enjoy this fluidity.

The Indian puppetry world is changing rapidly, and its needs are vast and urgent. There is a creative energy amongst the modern puppeteers, not found in the traditional circles. The modern puppeteers are trying to create a new synthesis, acknowledging the rich past, and drawing from it, forging new paths–and potentially–styles.

Unlike Japanese and Indonesian forms, Indian puppetry has had little influence in Australia. I wanted to experience traditional forms of puppetry during my time in ndia. I found the contact I had disturbing.

In Jaipur I was re-acquainted with the great tradition of Rajasthani string puppetry called kathputli. I spent two days with kathputli puppeteer Bangali Bhatt and his immediate family in the Jaipur suburbs. The kathputli have told the tales of gods and the exploits of Rajput kings for more than ‘seven generations’–the language marker signifying ‘time immemorial’. The style is thriving; every village fair in northwest India has a Rajasthani puppet show. Tourist shops have vividly coloured kathputli on display and for sale, even down south in Kerala.

Despite the apparent high profile the tradition is a shadow of its former self. The kathputli puppeteers now only perform the entr’actes from the historic repertoire: the dancing girl, the snake charmer, and the burning warrior on a horse. The body of the repertoire is rarely performed. Little new work is being created and the traditional patronage no longer exists. Puran Bhatt, a Delhi-based puppetmaster is creating a kathputli rendering of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute, but this is a rare and remarkable development, perhaps designed to give access to his artform to audiences in Europe, where he tours regularly.

By comparison, Kerala’s tolpava koothu (leather shadow) puppeteers abjure the commercialisation of their puppet heritage, refusing to sell tourist copies of puppets in the market. The temple performances use only three puppeteers, where once they employed sixteen. Only one boy from the next generation wants to learn the Ramayana and the Mahabharata play-cycles.

In the village heartland, puppetry is losing the battle with the new electronic media: from television to Bollywood movies. Most seriously puppetry seems caught in its traditional roles. The practitioners of the artform don’t know how to respond and survive. Ironically, traditional puppeteers are more honoured at the international puppet festivals than in their villages in Kerala and Orissa.

Sensing my own influence on a ‘cultural destruction’ with the son of a traditional tolpava koothu puppet master was a most confronting moment. Rajeev is the son of Ramachandra Pulavar, a ‘seventh-generation’ puppeteer. Ramachandra brought Rajeev to take part in the Natyadarsana workshops in Khozikode. 15 year-old Rajeev is the only boy of his generation who wants to become a puppeteer, learning the extensive ancient performance role of the temple puppeteer. Normally Rajeev would learn a 7, 14 or 21-day cycle of the Ramayana by apprenticeship, a performance that lasts from 10pm until 5am the next morning.

In Kozikhode, the boy began with the two-day children’s shadow workshop with Ranjana Pandey and Karen Smith. While visiting, his father noticed my group making puppets in the adult class in the Hotel Sea Queen banquet room. He decided to leave Rajeev to experience the Australian influence for 4 more days. My dilemma is what to teach Rajeev that wouldn’t make him want to escape Kerala, and go to a puppet college in Bombay or Delhi. The lad was quick on the uptake, with a willingness to try new materials besides leather and bamboo. For the first time in his life he was working with 3-dimensional puppets. He tried simple new tools and materials including the hot glue gun. He tried chipping foam rubber with a sharp pair of scissors. In performance he acquitted himself in the bunrakoz style–my term for modified bunraku–and showed a quick and almost intuitive sense of creating the puppet illusion. These experiences were dramatically different from the customary family business.

The presence of this future tolpava koothu puppeteer in my class was unsettling. It helped me understand my role and context as a teacher. Perhaps I was destroying his tradition. My Indian colleagues concurred. They kindly suggested that through me he may get a glimpse of his tradition in a world context, which would hopefully inspire him. I defer to their ‘glass-is-half-full’ optimism. I think his father was deliberately opening the boy’s puppetry horizons, indicating his father’s potentially gloomy vision about the future. Thinking about this encounter, I still cannot envisage the ramifications of my influence, whether I was being part of the problem or the solution.

But another significant experience was teaching puppetry to the boys from Salaam Baalak Trust. I’ve presented innumerable workshops with Australian children. I found the SBT experience quite extraordinary. The boys-in-care are a rough and ready bunch of teenagers. I did not question too heavily the back-stories of the kids, but I heard allusions to physical abuse, sexual exploitation, orphaning, drug culture and alcoholism, village despair and suicide. Forty boys live, sleep, study, eat in the Apna Ghar centre, and watch endless Bollywood fodder on the TV god. Sport and performing arts are seen as a viable form to make the social transition out of their situation. The boys all readily sing and dance, and will tell a joke or story without much self-conscious discomfort.

The twenty lads in the class from 10-18 years lacked the cynicism of many Australian teenagers when it comes to puppetry. They were eager for the experience. I would arrive Monday to Friday from 3-8pm, being warmly greeted with a cup of chai or water if I needed it. There are no girls and few women in that small enclave. The supportive and cooperative atmosphere knocked me out. Older boys playing with younger kids, tasks being done without asking, assistance to unpack or store the materials and tools safely, the ritual sweeping and washing of the room before the next group having dinner there, the resigned patience and tolerance of the circumstances when the electricity failed to work.

Six or more little kids would wander daily from their SBT centre Asara, through Old Delhi’s bazaar teeming with sellers, avoiding bullock carts and hand drawn trolleys, with the incessant honking of road traffic to Apna Ghar to attend the class. Some boys had experience with puppet plays. All boys wanted to participate: devising, making and performing with puppets in front of the group.

The emphasis of my workshops changed during the 5-month period from teaching an Australian way of doing things. I was creating outside their/my usual fields of operation. I began to discover Indian imagery beyond elephant and arch. The subject matter seemed to free the kids to think beyond their environment. The final outcome Dinosaurs and Rockets was performed for all the other big boys and their friends and their teachers. We barely had the blocking down, but we ran the play 3 times before the performance. From the photos, the SBT boys and staff in the audience were intrigued and engaged.

The most interesting outcome from my Asialink residence was re-evaluating my romanticised tourist notions of traditional India. I have always cherished a hope of seeing and supporting the preservation of folk traditions and handicrafts, including puppetry. My sequence of experiences during my Asialink residency showed me that my vision was unreal and impractical. From feedback I received from the aspiring and established Indian puppeteers I worked with, I think my residency was useful. The true inspiration I found in India was embedded in the aspirations of the SBT boys in Old Delhi. They approached my artform and me with a vigorous enthusiasm and openness I have rarely felt in asset rich Australia. Puppetry cannot become fixed in time and tradition. It must respond to the needs, interests and lives of those who come to the Valley of the Dolls, for whatever reason.

Andrew Hansen. (edited by Jennie Pfeiffer)

APPAN UNESCO Symposium and Festival, June 2004

SYMPOSIUM AND FESTIVAL IN BANGKOK ORGANISED BY APPAN UNESCO – 5th to 8th  June, 2004:

The Symposium and Festival titled “Puppets–Facing the Interior Face: Memory, Recovery and Transposition: The Asian Experience” worked towards bringing together artists from the Asia Pacific region to collaborate, explore inter-cultural exchanges and to influence International and National Government policies to preserve and promote the arts. This symposium aimed at getting traditional and modern puppeteers, puppet scholars and writers, critics, anthropologists and policy makers together to review the state of puppet theatre in the South East Asian countries and look deeper into issues concerning puppetry.  The Festival aimed to experiment with traditional forms and explore the possibilities of co-operations, and exchanges of techniques and ideas. UNESCO also introduced its draft conventions for an Oral and Intangible Heritage Declaration.

The Symposium and Festival had FOUR components.

1. Paper presentations and discussions. Over four days the theme of the Symposium was divided into two parts. The first part was titled “Primitive Man : Formation and Transformation of Puppets, which took a critical look at the development of puppets from their earliest origins to modern times. The second part was a panel discussion titled “Puppets as a Tool for Power over Self and the World” on the use of puppetry in voicing dissent and protest.
2. Interactive workshop between performers from different countries began under the guidance of Greg Methe. The first session involved an introduction of work by the puppeteers and a short demonstration of their puppetry skills. Then each individual articulated their motive for interacting with other puppeteers. Some wanted to acquire new skills, others wanted to improve their existing skills and etc. All the puppeteers made their puppets available for others to play with. Despite language barriers the puppeteers communicated ideas and techniques. The puppeteers then divided into groups on the basis of technique – Glove/rod, String and Shadow. They discussed the possibilities of a joint demonstration. At the end of the session each group had worked on a rough script idea. At the second session on the next day groups collected to rehearse the performances and decide on technical aspects: lights, music etc. The sessions culminated in a combined presentation.
3. Performances of puppeteers from the participating countries presented at the Patravadi Theatre complex by puppeteers from Lao PDR, South Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Thailand. On the 4th day presentations were made by Japan,Cambodia and by the two Indian representatives (Puran Bhatt/Anurupa Roy). This was followed by the joint performances of all the participants.
4. The final component of the festival was the exhibition of Indian puppets mounted at the Patravadi Exhibition Gallery loaned to APPAN by the Sangeet Natak Akademi. The exhibition space was an indoor space with a wooden ceiling, walls on three sides and a open fourth side, which let in natural light. Most of the puppets were rod or glove: Mr Ravi Gopal Nair had brought fifteen of his Pava-Kathakali puppets of Kerala and Mr Puran Bhatt had brought ten.

The symposium was a very good forum for understanding the current state of puppet theatre in Asia, especially in relation to socio-political situations. It was possible to see the links between the art forms and culture and trace their common roots. It was also possible to see the stages of evolution of modern puppetry in the different Asian countries and predict the future of these phenomena The symposium also provided the performers with relevant information on International policy for promoting and preserving the arts. Discussions revealed that puppeteers face the same problems in different countries.

The high point of the Conference was the interactive session where all the puppeteers exchanged techniques, tried out each others puppets and swapped ideas, followed by the joint performance. They enabled us to be one on one with each other and our skills. Interaction occurred at two levels. Firstly we played with each others puppets, and picked each others brains about technique. Then we grouped together on the basis of technique i.e. rod, shadow, glove and marionette. I was put in the marionette group as I was the odd one out using table top puppets. We proceeded to make our own stories. Our group of four was Puran Bhatt, the traditional Rajasthani puppeteer, two traditional string puppeteers from Burma  and I. Each group made a new story and used a pool of puppets from their combined stocks to create the showing. It was neither a common story, nor pieces of different stories strung together, but individual character driven stories by 4 different groups mainly inspired by the appearance of the character rather than its role in a traditional story. For example the Prince of Myannmar is a well-dressed aristocratic puppet and fits the universal description of a rich prince. In our performance he was an improvised warrior or a swordsman.

A notable feature was that the performers did not perform the Ramayana/Mahabharata, which is common to all of South and South-East Asia, but chose to invent new stories around their stock characters. Our theme was love; the shadow group had a theme of the victory of good over evil. One of the groups had a Vietnamese folk tale interpreted by Vietnamese rod puppets, Indian Pava-kathakali puppets and glove puppets from Lao PDR (I think).

Problems did arise around language. Most puppeteers only spoke their mother tongue but that did not really create the largest barrier in the performance making. The main problem was that time was too short. A longer interactive workshop would have yielded better results. A mix of traditions would have been a great activity i.e. if strings, shadow and marionette were thrown together, but that did not happen.

The exploration of possibilities impressed me. Under normal circumstances, and I speak on behalf of Indian puppeteers, a traditional Rajasthani puppeteer would never collaborate with another string puppet form, even an Indian Yakshagana Gombayata, let alone Burmese string puppets. Also, when traditional and modern Indian puppeteers want to collaborate or experiment with another style they usually pick Western puppetry styles. The awareness of the traditions of Asia is minimal.

The devised pieces were presented on the final day at the Patravadi theatre.

Though the preparation time was short, the collaborations were interesting. The output of the shadow groups was spectacular, which was a  collaboration between Cambodian shadow puppets and Modern Japanese shadow puppets. Their story, and mixing of modern and traditional, was ingenious. The audience responded very well to these collaborative shows.

Anarupa Roy.  (ed. Jennie Pfeiffer)

Latest Asia-Pacific news: The Tsunami

This is the latest Asia-Pacific news from  Jennifer Pfeiffer,  President of the UNIMA Asia-Pacific International Commission:

"I have recently had word of my official appointment as new President of the UNIMA Asia-Pacific International Commission. The next Asia-Pacific Commission meeting is likely to be hosted this October in Singapore.

Tsunami

Unfortunately we have received news of a new Puppetry Museum being destroyed by the tsunami in Sri Lanka. The Museum had only been officially open since September 2004. It is a sad loss. The program of the Museum included a proposal for a bi-lateral volunteer residency program set up with UNIMA centers from other countries, and that was to include home-stay for participants with local families from the host country. Other proposed activities included: puppet making, puppetry training in forms of the host country, learning of the historical context of contemporary fine/folk arts of Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan traditional drums and musical instruments lessons, imparting knowledge of indigenous characters of Sri Lanka through puppetry, and video recordings of narrative songs, dialogues and performances.

Mr Lal Emmanuel, Secretary of the National Sri Lanka UNIMA Centre, requested assistance from the UNIMA International Centre. After a series of communications and discussions, UNIMA has since determined that in the unique circumstances, humanitarian aid must be a decision made by individuals, but that UNIMA will lend assistance as possible. To formally undertake such fundraising, (for emergency aid) specific requirements needed to be addressed, and the administration and delivery of funds and/or goods proved to be problematic to a specific location. Each country must make their own decisions about actions taken and any ensuing accountabilities. I have heard from Mr Emmanuel recently, who has said that the immediate needs of his community have been provided for by the aid agencies in the area. Fundraising and reinstating the Puppet Museum in Sri Lanka at an appropriate time is definitely planned. My best wishes go to him and the community of around 600 families who lived in the near locale of the museum.

Researching of the situations for more communities having close puppetry ties in the Asia-Pacific region disclosed news of a Mr A. Selvaraja, (Tol Bommalatam) of Tamil Nadu, a shadow puppeteer who lived in Chennai. Mr Selvaraja lost everything including his dwelling and all his assets in the Tsunami. His puppets of nearly fifty years, the entire set, was washed away and therefore he is unable to carry on with his traditional profession.

Mr Selvaraja took part in the Putul Yatra as part of the Swarna Jayanti celebrations in March 2003, New Delhi, organised by the Sangeet Natak Akademi. To replace his puppets he needs to outlay Rs 1000/- per puppet (around $30 AU), which includes the cost of the special leather, colours, painting etc. No government agency is able to help him. He is appealing for help to replace the puppets and to carry on his traditional art and livelihood. I believe he needs around 50 puppets. If anyone wants to assist this puppeteer in the first instance please contact me and I will forward you details of where to direct assistance."