Charming Quanzhou Marionettes

It was over a decade since Quanzhou Marionette Troupe came to Singapore. Yesterday night I had the chance to watch them perform live again at a temple in Defu Lane

Quanzhou marionette is one of the most popular form of puppetery in China, on par with Zhangzhou glove puppetery and Sichuan rod puppetery. In my opinion, marionettes are the hardest to control because you have to control the puppets' movements by their attached strings, and these strings are not short! The puppeteers do not just stand behind the backdrop and manipulate the puppets; they climb up a platform of 2 meters and control from the top

Yesterday's show was entitled "Thrice Hitting The White Bone Demoness". The story tells about Tripikata and his 3 disciples coming face to face with a demoness while on their journey to the West to retrieve holy scriptures. The White Bone Demoness transformed herself thrice into human form; a young lady, a middle-aged woman and an old man, trying to lure the monk out of the safety circle Sun Wukong has drawn on the ground to protect him. Sun Wukong could tell that these are transformations of the demoness and tried to kill them. Tripikata insisted that they were indeed human beings and that Wukong had commited a great sin. He decided to disown Wukong and send him back to his cave. However, Tripikata finally realised his mistake when he was later captured by the White Bone Demoness at a "temple" -- a trap set up by the White Bone Demoness. The White Bone Demoness sent her men to invite her mother, the Cicada Demoness, over for a feast on Tripikata flesh. Sun Wukong waylaid the gang, had them killed and impersonated the Demoness instead. He managed to get into the cave undetected, and soon after he saw his master, he revealed his true identity. After freeing Pigsy and Sandy, the trio fought together aganist the White Bone Demoness and her gang. The White Bone Demoness was no match against them and finally perished under Wukong's Palm of Fire.

Overall, I think the show was a success. The troupe managed to keep the audience captivated throughout their 2 1/2 hour performance with their entertaining storyline and puppetery acts. I think for puppet shows, it is important that the scripts are well chosen, as puppets are afterall lifeless pieces of wood and it'll bore the audience if they do not see anything entertaining happening on stage. I've seen another rod marionette troupe's performance earlier this year, and although the puppeteers has had the required skills to manipulate the marionettes, they chose the wrong show and hence lost their audience. What they showcased was their puppets trying to imitate Chinese opera stunts like horse whipping, beard swaying and hair swinging. For those who has had no Chinese opera knowlege, all these acts simply made no sense, especially when without a plot or any dialogues!

Another thing I like about them is they have a subtitle machine by the side of the stage. Although they were speaking and singing in Quanzhou accent, understanding of the show was made easy with their Chinese subtitles. However, there was something which I wasn't too happy with, and that was the skills of the puppeteers. I believe some of the puppeteers were still relatively young, hence their skills weren't as polished as those who came to Singapore previously. There were instances whereby the wrong string was pulled (leg string instead of the arm string). It wasn't exactly very obvious, but it simply doesn't look good either.

In short, this is a very entertaining show which I have long looked forward to. I hope I can still have the chance to catch them perform again real soon!

There were plans by the Hokkien Huay Kuan to invite the troupe over again next year during the Hokkien Festival to perform. However, details of this festival is still unknown as of now.