by Jim Goodman
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| Mandalay puppeteers in action |
Mandalay was the last capital
of the Kingdom of Burma, from 1861-1885, when it was also the center of Burmese
culture and its fine arts traditions. When the British swept into Mandalay,
they abolished the monarchy and annexed the rest of the state. The country’s
arts and crafts, bereft of royal patronage, suffered precipitous decline,
particularly its puppet theater.
Even after independence in 1948 the tradition remained weak and its
future bleak. But in recent
decades, with a change in both patrons and audience, the puppets are back. And the most appropriate place to
witness this is the Mandalay Marionettes and Culture Show, in the city where
they once flourished.
About an hour long, the show
includes performances of classical musical instruments, Burmese and ethnic
minority dances and, most of all, skits with stringed puppets—marionettes. It was to preserve this latter
tradition that two women, Ma Ma Naing and Naing Yei Mar, founded this theater
in 1986, just over a century after the British takeover eliminated its primary
patron. Finding a couple of
surviving puppeteers, they brought them out of retirement to train new ones and
supervise the making of the marionettes.
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| the marionette show's orchestra |
The theater contains a small,
elevated stage where the show-opening harp soloist, dancers and marionettes
perform. Between the audience and
the stage sits the orchestra. This
comprises mostly percussion instruments, with men on drums and gongs, a xylophone
and one on a high-pitched oboe. To
an uninitiated ear this can sound cacophonous, though in the opening puppet
skit, depicting the creation of the world, this is intentional. The percussion also serves to
accentuate moods in the different puppet scenes.
Traditionally, prior to the
show, the puppeteers make a food offering to the Goddess of Performance, which
they believe enables their marionettes ‘to breathe.’ Then they spend time grooming and talking to their puppets
and invite their spirits into their own bodies for the duration of the
performance.
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| playing the Burmese harp |
The puppeteers stand on stage
behind a waist-high painted backdrop and a curtain conceals their upper
bodies. Periodically the curtain
rises to reveal their deft manipulation of the marionettes. In one hand the puppeteer grasps a
handle holding at least eleven strings connected to various parts of the
marionette’s body. With the other
hand he or she pulls on separate strings to make the body parts move and the
marionette walk, turn, crouch, bow, sit, dance or fly through the air. They also, when the skit requires, sing
or speak the dialog of the puppets.
The first skit always depicts
a pair of puppets representing nats--Burmese
nature spirits—witnessing the creation of the world out of primeval chaos. Usually the next scene shows the
introduction of animals to the world, especially the white horse, believed to
be the first animal ever created. It
concludes with the dance of the magician, wearing red robes and waving a wand.
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| Ayutthaya-style candle dance |
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| manipulating the magician puppet |
With this we are now in the
world of the humans and the rest of the skits narrate stories from history and
mythology, especially the Jataka Tales
of previous incarnations of the Buddha and the Indian epic Ramayana. Kings,
queens, gods, ogres, ministers, pages, commoners and clowns dance through these
scenes, the crowd favorite usually the duet between the prince and princess. Often just one to three appear on stage
at any given time, but some scenes can involve as many as eight puppets at once,
with the curtain lifting and showing the same number of puppeteers visible
above them.
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| nat dance at the Creation of the World |
Because the marionettes are
preceded by a harp player and interrupted by solo dance performances and one by
an ethnic minority group, usually Karen, they are only on stage about
two-thirds of the show. The
lilting music of the harp certainly helps create an atmosphere of bygone times,
as do the individual classical dances, but as a result spectators only see a
small fraction of the traditional puppet repertoire.
According to rules laid down
by royal courts in the past, the marionette troupe consisted of 28 characters
and the Mandalay show has insufficient time to use them all. The puppeteers are familiar with all of
the characters, though, and anyway don’t run the same skits each night, so find
regular opportunities for their use.
Sometimes the troupe performs at festivals in the countryside, when
performances start, as in the old days, at sunset and continue until
sunrise. The entire set of 28
classic marionettes, plus maybe a few modern additions, see action then.
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| scene from the Ramayana epic |
The first historical evidence
of the puppet tradition is the recording of a performance on a slab in a 15th
century temple in Sagaing. It’s
not clear how popular it was back then, or how widespread, but from the
foundation of the Konbaung Dynasty in 1752 the puppet tradition entered its
golden age. Following their
destruction of the Siamese capital Ayutthaya in 1767, the victorious Burmese
abducted members of the Siamese elite and its artisans, actors, musicians and
the entire royal dance troupe and removed them to their own country.
This sudden influx of Siamese artistic influence
sparked the blossoming of Burmese fine arts, impacting its sculpture, painting,
poetry and especially its drama.
Besides the royal court, provincial governors also patronized the
Siamese artisans and performers, who were so much more accomplished and
polished than their own. But
eventually they recruited natives to fill their places, prompting more Burmese
modifications to the arts and the substitution of Burmese for Thai as the stage
language for dramas.
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| Rama puppet |
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| Hanuman puppet |
Several years after the fall
of Ayutthaya the Konbaung Court set up a Ministry of Theater to control and
regulate the growing, ever more popular dramatic profession. Rules formulated for the two kinds of
theater—that played by human actors and that staged by
marionettes—differed. The prudery
of the times limited how much could be said or acted in love duets. The Ministry also tabooed costumes of
royal regalia, monks’ robes or depiction of the Buddha, as well as any dialog
or song containing criticism of the royal court.
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| Jataka Tales skit |
The general populace couldn’t
do that and this was one aspect of the puppet theater that helped its
burgeoning popularity. On the
other hand, sometimes government ministers arranged for a royal marionette
performance precisely because the puppet characters would be able to work lines
of dialog somewhere in the skits to bring a certain scandal to the attention of
the king.
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| the comic character U Sheay Yoe and villagers |
Except for the rainy season,
puppet troupes did a lot of traveling, staging shows in places far from the
capital. For their hosts, they
were the prime source of information on the capital, its politics and
intrigues, scandals and shenanigans.
At the same time, their members became aware of local situations,
complaints and grievances, which they might very well work into their own
skits, to be highlighted next performance back at the Court. No popular press existed at that time
to air such topics, so the marionettes filled the gap.
Politics was never a dominant
concern of the puppet tradition, however.
Its main function was entertainment, but of a sort leaning towards edification
as well. Most skits had religious
themes, emphasizing a specific moral precept. In fact, sometimes a patron would request a performance to
include a certain Jataka Tale skit
that imparted a moral lesson he wanted conveyed to someone he had invited to
watch the show.
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| page boy puppet |
The audience for marionette
performances in the old days was not the polite, quiet and attentive crowd that
watches today. Since the shows ran
for several hours late at night, those attending might take a nap, eat, smoke
and converse during the performance, applaud skits they liked and boo those
they didn’t. They could even get
carried away and attack a puppet representing a character whose actions aroused
their disapproval.
While the rural masses enjoyed
the marionette show for its stories and spectacle, the Burmese elite
appreciated it for its combination of different aspects of traditional
art. Aspiring puppeteers spent
many years learning these, beginning with making the puppets themselves. The typical marionette consisted of 18
separate carved wooden parts: one
for the head, one for the neck, two for the torso, six for the arms and eight
for the legs, with wires joining the pieces together. Strings connected most,
but not all, of these pieces to the puppeteer’s handle, but separate strings
might also operate the jaw and eyes.
The makers also implanted
genuine human hair to the heads for their coiffures, mustaches and beards and
strove to make lifelike faces. With a few exceptions (Rama and other Ramayana characters) the marionettes had white faces, black brows
and eyes and red lips. While the
arms of the puppets were abnormally long, the rest of the body they modeled on
human bodies, including the sexual organs, though these were concealed by the garments. When completed, the puppets averaged 65
cm in height.
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| duet of puppet and human |
Puppet-makers dressed their
marionettes in a variety of costumes.
A few characters wore ordinary traditional outfits of shirts and lungyis or sarongs and the males had
turbans with a loose end tucked up behind the head or dangling over the right
temple. The male puppeteers
wear these during the show.
Most characters were royalty,
ministers or other members of the elite and wore much fancier garments. The coats, sashes, vests and dresses,
of brocaded silk or cotton, were bright colors, liberally festooned with
sequins and little glass jewels.
The puppets also wore elaborate crowns or headdresses and altogether
their ensembles replicated those worn at the royal court. And because commoners rarely, if ever,
saw such clothing in those days, the costumes displayed in a marionette show
were one of its greatest attractions.
In the puppet theater’s 19th
century heyday, puppeteers, singers and musicians won high public esteem and
the profession attracted a steady supply of talent. It was even more popular than the dance dramas with human
actors. Audiences also rated human
dancers according to how closely they could mimic the movements of the
marionettes. One of the skits in the
Mandalay show features a duet of a marionette and a human dancer, while the
puppeteer above her pretends to manipulate her with invisible strings.
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| group scene of puppets and puppeteers |
A very conservative tradition
in its days of glory, unlike live drama quite resistant to innovation, the
puppet theater had to make changes in the colonial period. Having lost the prime source of financing
for this relatively expensive art form, in terms of training and performance
preparation, it now competed for paying customers with the shows staged by live
performers.
The singers left for its rival
theater and so the puppeteers themselves had to take on the singing and
speaking parts. They allowed women
to be puppeteers for the first time.
They introduced new skits with lots more action and replaced the plain
white backdrops with painted scenery.
Finally, when financing became even more difficult, they dropped the
orchestra in favor of gramophone recordings.
In spite of these adaptations
interest continued to wane. By the
time the British left only a few dozen troupes remained in the whole
country. The military government
in the 1960s, as part of promoting all things Burmese, tried to revive it, but
also wanted to use it for propaganda messages. Experienced puppeteers began dying and the whole tradition
was on the way to extinction with their passing.
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| Jataka Tales scene |
So it was in the nick of time
that Ma Ma Naing and Naing Yei Mar conceived their passion for its
revival. Several old masters were
still around and proved ready to impart their skills and knowledge. After the inauguration of the Mandalay
Marionettes Culture Show in 1986 other places in prominent tourist destinations,
like Bagan and Yangon, began opening puppet theaters. High-end restaurants included puppet performances as part of
the dinner show.
It’s a different audience this
time around; not local villagers or a royal court, but foreigners. They don’t know the stories or
recognize the characters. For most
it’s just exotic entertainment, though appreciated at least for its skill and
spectacle. With the growth in this
foreign audience, especially with the tourist boom in recent decades, more
puppet theaters have opened in Myanmar.
More young people are finding jobs making puppets, playing classical
instruments and becoming puppeteers.
Whether the puppet theater
will again achieve in the countryside the popularity it enjoyed in the Konbaung
Dynasty remains to be seen. Yet
the tradition has definitely made its comeback and its future looks
positive. For now it has a new and
perhaps permanent patron—the tourist.
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| a royal duet |
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