Adapted English version of an article for the magazine De Wereld van het Poppenspel (the World of Puppetry):
That July afternoon, each coming in from other parts of China, Harriet van Reek and I finally met up in Dehong prefecture, an ethnically very diverse subtropical area, almost on the Burmese border. It was the first time Harriet was traveling through China and from that day on I was her guide, interpreter and friend.
In my previous blog, written before the event started, I already introduced the Dutch artist Harriet van Reek (www.harrietvanreek.nl) and showed some pictures of her work.
I have been visiting the Jingpo ethnic minority area since almost 20 years ago, and one could call me an expert on Zaiwa, the Jingpo’s main language within China. Needless to say, I know a lot of people here and we are starting a project… Wait, I’ll tell you later because the puppetry performance is starting… Now we are going to see Jingpo children performing their own stories with the puppets they made themselves…..
Rabbit is the smartest of all animals, fooling just everyone. Some even get themselves tricked by him much more than once so you can laugh about Dragon’s foolishness. Or Tiger’s, whose stripes and bad throat are all results of Rabbit’s trickery.
One day Rabbit fell into a deep pit. It was so deep he couldn’t get out. He was trapped! Then he heard someone coming. It was Tiger. “Hey, Tiger brother, where are you going? The sky is going to fall down! You’d better come down here! Quickly!” Tiger believed him, and was very frightened, and jumped into the hole. And there they sat together. After a while, Rabbit began to tickle Tiger. Tiger said, “Stop that, you little pest, or I’ll throw you out of here!” “Oh, no, please don’t do that, Tiger!” begged Rabbit. But after a little while, he began to tickle Tiger again. Tiger was furious. He took hold of Rabbit and threw him out of the pit. Rabbit jumped up gleefully and ran away.
The full story still went on for a while. After he got out of the pit, Rabbit threw down a lot of dried leaves and a piece of burning firewood. But we didn’t go that far that day.
This opening of our show became a bit messy, which we didn’t really mind though, because of the boys’ improvisation while I was reading out this story in Zaiwa. The funny thing was that they played part of this story down on the floor, invisible for the audience. Of course, since weren’t Rabbit and Tiger deep down in a pit then?
These and other pieces were performed, by different groups of kids, at the last day of our project (August 8th, 2010), watched by parents, teachers and a local tv crew. Our video is on: Youtube and facebook.com/PropRoots. Pictures of this project are in the pictures folder here. The music (about “Rabbit”) played between acts and used as ‘working music’ (“Summer”) was from my hand, and can be heard on: Myspace.
This is the story coined by a group of slightly elder girls and also played on the last day:
Four very close girlfriends went into the forest to pick mushrooms. One of them got lost, but somehow later on appeared again. But actually this was a demon, but the other girls could not do otherwise than believe her, since she answered all the questions correctly. This demon girl later on persuaded them to go into the forest again, which they did. This girl acted more and more strangely and the other girls unmasked the demon only just in time. They cut open her belly and out came the poor real girlfriend. The demon, though, felt remorse and in the end they all became good friends.
The aim of my Prop Roots Program is to make use of my tight bond with the Chinese, western and Jingpo cultures, to make connections with interesting, creative and scientifically minded individuals and institutions, to achieve a wide range of projects in the integrated fields of education, research and exchange. A great meeting place between various disciplines and cultures is coming into existence here, empowering the Jingpo and enhancing the Jingpo children’s future. Worth noting here is that not only for foreigners but also for most fellow Chinese citizens, the ‘Jingpo’ world is also still largely unknown, thus increasing the value of intercultural exchange even more. This platform is also the breeding ground for unprecedented creations that I always have wished to feed upon, and where I will continue making art and music, though more often with Jingpo children as a sounding board, more for project aims, and more deeply breathing the spirit of Jingpo culture. There will also be guest studios!
Dehong prefecture, where the Jingpo live (counting ± 130.000 within China and much more numerous in Burma) is a beautiful place inhabited by wonderful people. For decades, the Jingpo have been struggling with enormous problems around HIV/Aids and drugs, poverty and the loss of their traditional culture. The Prop Roots Program can provide better education, making the kids stronger and more creative, so that they can have a better future. We also want to set up inspiring video and other exchanges with schools in the Netherlands or other countries, and invite interesting people to come and teach and do more projects. Throughout this all, we also aim to reintroduce elements from the traditional oral culture, often making use of fieldwork materials collected by myself. More information can be found on www.facebook.com/PropRoots (which is also accessible for non-facebook people).
All puppeteers and other enthusiasts are highly welcome here and together we will place Dehong on the “world map” op puppetry and special arts! There are plenty of things to do!
This was our second experiment with entertaining and teaching Jingpo children, while also making use of elements of the traditional Jingpo oral culture. Again it showed that it is not so easy to wake the kids’ interest into the old stories. So, we should not put too much emphasis on those elements. And isn’t it even better to have the kids making their own stories, anyway?
I should also tell that on the first day, Harriet and I were rather disappointed and slightly panicking, because during the morning session the kids were surprisingly serious and silent, and, moreover, just a few showed up for the afternoon session. Now we know that this was because (1) they were not used to this kind of playful event, and (2) they were too glad they had holiday and didn’t want to return to their school, with so many associations to boringness and tiresomeness. (The holidays also cause addictions to television and playing outside.) But, children are still unpredictable, and gradually they became more and more excited and even very creative, as can be seen from the photos. So finally it became a lot of fun.
This may have been a small event, but, especially since it is the first of its kind in this area, it will have a long-lasting influence, and it is a good example for future projects.
Anton Lustig
Beijing, October 18, 2010
No comments:
Post a Comment