WOODEN LIVES
A Life-size Puppets Performance
@ Riuhinthecity
Date:
7 & 8 Dec 2019 (Sat & Sun)
Time:
4.30pm
Duration:
approx 25 minutes
Venue:
Sentul Depot
Free admission
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Premiered in 2016 at Masjid Jamek Station for Think City’s Arts on the Move project, this simple story of an old couple made many commuters stop to watch and even shed a few tears.
In 2014, Natacha Belova–a puppet maker from Brussels, Belgium–was invited to Malaysia to conduct a two-week all-day workshop on building and manipulating human-size puppets and masks. A little over a dozen people participated, made up of actors, dancers and a few visual artists. Many of the produced life-size puppets bore cartoon-like characteristics–overlarge heads, robots, skull-like beings and ghouls. A couple of the participants created realistic live-like ones.
Yiky Chew, a young actress built an old woman and when completely dressed in a floral blouse and a sarong, sitting in a wheelchair, the puppet looked like someone locked in time. As serendipity had it Soon Heng Lim, another actor, built a wrinkled lined old man and the occasion triggered the videotaping of an improvised scene between the two characters: two doddering old people abandoned by the young and left to fend for themselves. They wait in anticipation of the hoped-for visitor.
These puppets have been used in street theatre and one used in a musical production of gamelan music. One has visited a school.
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Puppeteers
Yiki Chew
Lim Kien Lee
Director
Lim Soon Heng
Lim Kien Lee
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