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We Perform for the Gods |
| Section: CULTURE / PEOPLES |
| Author: Peter Schoppert |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 1/1/1988 |
| Size: 1,305 Words, 8,041 Characters |
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The gods and spirits of the dead who visit Singapore during the seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar have special tastes in the arts: Fans of opera and popular music, the "hungry ghosts" are said to love puppetry best.
Human audiences at Chinese puppet shows in today's Singapore are quickly bored by the crude performances of the few remaining amateur puppet troupes. But that does not seem to matter. As one puppeteer put it, "We perform for the gods. We are happy to serve in this way. The human audience is irrelevant."
This was not always true. Chinese puppetry has ancient roots, growing up since the Tang dynasty (A.D. 619-907) parallel with full-scale theater. The glove or hand puppetry tradition that began at least three hundred years ago in the Fujian province of sout...
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...he Xin Sai Le puppets have not been used for years, Singapore's National Museum stores them in the traditional manner: cloth bodies turned inside-out over the wooden heads. Unless the puppets are stored in this way, they risk becoming possessed by wandering spirits. It seems that in Singapore the gods maintain their appreciation for glove puppets, even though human audiences have lost interest.
(812 of 8,041 characters)
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