More Than Just Entertainment: Myanmar’s Marionettes

  

                                             by Jim Goodman

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.

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.

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.

Ayutthaya-style candle dance

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.

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.

scene from the Ramayana epic

       The first historical evidence of the puppet tradition is the recording of a performance on a slab in a 15^th 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.

Rama puppet

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.

 

Jataka Tales skit

      The marionettes had much more leeway.  Some of them were royal characters and dressed in specifically royal costumes.  The most appreciated skit in the repertoire is a duet of a prince and princess, both regally garbed and bejeweled, while other marionettes are of monks, the Buddha and the Hindu god Rama.  The marionettes could also speak or sing about corruption and abuses of authority without fear of subsequent retaliation or arrest for their manipulators.  They were, after all, ‘possessed’ by the spirits of their puppets and thus not responsible for offending words.

       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.

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. 

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.       

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 19^th 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.

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.

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.

a royal duet

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Shifting Royal Capitals of Pre-Colonial Burma

                                                          by Jim Goodman

       Mandalay, Myanmar’s second largest city, lies virtually in the center of the country on the east bank of the Irrawaddy River.  It was the last capital of independent Burma before the British conquest in 1885 and the removal of the capital to Yangon in the south.   The city had served as the administrative seat of Burma’s final kings only since 1860, three years after it was built.  The location was not very far from previous royal capitals, all of which lay within the heartland and principal power centers of the Burmese nationality throughout Myanmar’s history.  The Shan dominated the areas to the north and the Mon, until the mid-18^th century, had their own states in the south. 

Sagaing

       Bagan, capital of the first Burmese Empire, lies downriver to the southwest.  From the 10^th to the 14^th centuries it held direct control over most of the Irrawaddy Valley and exercised its authority as far east as the edge of the Khmer Empire in present-day Thailand.  When it collapsed after the Mongol invasion it broke up into smaller rival states that fought each other, as well as Shan and Mon rivals, disappearing and re-appearing, expanding and contracting, over the next several centuries.

       Sagaing, on the west bank of the Irrawaddy 20 km downriver from Mandalay, took an early turn as capital in 1315.  Today the site is a temple and stupa-studded group of low hills, with a small administrative and commercial center along the shore.  With over 500 monasteries and more than 6000 resident monks and nuns, the town today is primarily a Buddhist retreat and meditation center.  Connected by bridge to the other bank, Sagaing is popular as a quiet day-trip for Mandalay residents seeking respite from the congestion of the big city.

Burmese warrior, Bagaya Kyaung

       If tranquility, supplemented by good scenery, is the goal of the day’s excursion, it doesn’t take long to achieve that in Sagaing.  The hills are still heavily wooded, dappled with white or gold stupas popping up above the tree lines, each summit crowned with a temple compound.   Paths lead from the shoreline up to each of these, passing through the quiet forest, with views at the top of the river and bridge, distant Mandalay, the plains to the west and the stupas and monasteries on Sagaing’s other hills.

       Whatever palace or fortifications Sagaing might have had in the past have disappeared.  Its run as a royal city lasted just under fifty years.  Its own king moved the capital across the river to Inwa.  This was an altogether more defensible location, for a canal connected a tributary with a bend in the Irrawaddy, making the new capital’s site an island.  Even today the only way to access Inwa is by a small ferry. 

the walls of Ava

      The new state saw itself as Bagan’s successor and tried to re-establish the former empire.  After some initial success Inwa, or Ava as it was later known as to the West, got bogged down in a debilitating 40-years war with the Mon in the south towards the end of the 14^th century.  The following century components of the state broke away and in 1527 the Confederation of Shan States captured Ava and made it their own capital.  Just 18 years later, however, the Burman state of Toungoo, further south, which had seceded in 1510, captured Ava and annexed its territory.

       Under Bayinnaung the kingdom expanded to include most of contemporary Myanmar, as well as northern Thailand.  But after his death in 1581 the kingdom soon lost all its possessions, only to revive under one of his sons and re-establish itself in 1599, this time putting its capital in Ava.  The Toungoo Dynasty lasted until 1752, when Mon forces captured Ava.  A few years later Alaungpaya, a Burmese lord from Shwebo, 115 km northwest of Sagaing, rallied Burmese and Shan and launched a campaign against the Mon.

Inwa village girls

       After five years Alaungpaya captured the Mon stronghold at Bago (formerly known as Pegu) and established the Konbaung Dynasty on a firm footing.  His capital originally was his hometown Shwebo.  A moat and some of the city walls still remain there.  But after his death in 1760 his son transferred the capital to Sagaing for a while and then to Ava again in 1765.  Upon his death the next monarch King Bodawpaya shifted it to Amarapura in 1783, eight kilometers northeast.  His successor Bagyidaw returned to Ava in 1821, then went back to Amarapura in 1837 after an earthquake leveled most of Ava.   

       Altogether Ava served as a royal capital of one state or another longer than any other city since Bagan.  Today, though, little remains to suggest its former glory.  Parts of the city walls still stand, as well as one of its 19^th century towers, two outstanding temples and several stupas.  Part of this is due to the fact that Ava was never a very big metropolis to begin with, certainly not on the scale of its nearest rivals in Angkor or Ayutthaya.  Its kings lavished money on palaces and stupas, but until its last turn as a capital, not on temples.  Also, except for its walls, the buildings were mainly built of wood and what survived the earthquake was mostly dismantled and removed to furnish the buildings in Amarapura.

Bagaya Kyaung

       Not everything was removed, though, nor did it become a completely abandoned place.  Villages of stilted houses made from wood and split bamboo, with thatched roofs, exist today in parts of the island.  Whether their ancestors stayed behind after the Court and government left permanently for Amarapura or were outsiders who moved into the deserted area afterwards, today they work farms on land where palaces once stood, catch fish in the river and canal, revere and maintain existing old stupas and send their children to school at Bagaya Kyaung Monastery, one of the premier attractions of a tour around the site of the ancient city.

       Boats drop visitors off at a dock near the northern gate.  Here the pony-carts wait to take them around, the usual way to explore the sights.  The leisurely ride takes two to three hours, depending on how long you stop to examine details.  It begins with the biggest remaining section of the brick walls that once surrounded the royal city.  Some of the foundations and an old brick stupa lie in the vicinity, flanked by rice fields.  The pony-cart ambles along a dirt road past more fields, occasional small stupas, ponds and groves and soon arrives at Bagaya Kyaung.

manuscript case inside Bagaya Kyaung

       Constructed in 1834 of strong teakwood, utilizing 267 posts as support, with sloping red roofs and a slim, five-tiered central steeple, the building was sturdy enough to withstand the earthquake a few years later.  Many of the pillars and sections of the wooden railing around the base of the main temple feature outstanding carvings of birds, elephants, lions, warriors, kinnarees (half-bird, half-woman), Buddhas and other imagery and embellishments from the Buddhist tradition.

       Within the temple a seated Buddha image rests on a large, ornate, gilded chair.  Elegant, carved and lacquered manuscript cases, one atop a low table, one mounted on wheels, stand near the altar.  In the mornings village boys attend school in one of the side rooms.

Maha Aungwe Bazan monastery, Ava

       Ava’s other extant temple, the Maha Aungwe Bazan monastery, went up in 1821, at the start of King Bagyidaw’s reign, when he shifted the royal residence back to Ava from Amarapura.  His chief queen, Meh Nu, sponsored its construction as a residence for the royal abbot.  Unlike most structures at that time, rather than wood the compound was built with brick and stucco.  The overall pale, dull yellow color is in contrast to the dark brown and bright red that characterizes Bagaya Kyaung.  It suffered some damage during the earthquake, but did not collapse and in 1872 the Court in Mandalay ordered its renovation.

Nyanmin watchtower, Ava

       The earthquake affected the old royal palace more and today only the two-story Nyanmin watchtower remains.  Standing 27 meters high, of the same pale yellow brick and stucco as Maha Aungwe Bazan, it tilts slightly and from its upper level one has a view across the island and as far as Sagaing.  Parts of the city wall foundations, the remnants of a fort on the southern side and several old and new stupas complete the list of Ava’s historical vestiges.  The rest of the island is a picture of typical rural life, of self-sufficient farmers growing their food, making buildings of local materials and weaving their own cloth, much as they did when Ava was a Kingdom.

       Amarapura’s second turn as royal capital proved to be shorter than its first.  Following the Second Anglo-Burmese War of 1852, in which the British seized the rest of Lower Burma, augmenting the acquisition of Arakan and Tenasserim it had won after the first war three decades earlier, the Court deposed the ruling monarch and appointed King Mindon to rule.  In 1857 he inaugurated the building of yet another capital, this time at Mandalay and in 1860 transferred the administration to the new site. As with Ava after its post-earthquake evacuation, timber from the royal palace in Amarapura was used to construct the new one in Mandalay. 

temple in Amarapura

       Today Amarapura is practically a southern suburb of sprawling Mandalay, but a quiet and attractive suburb nonetheless.  Weaving goes beyond household requirements here and Amarapura is a major supplier of hand-woven textiles to the Mandalay markets.  Villages on its perimeter specialize in Buddha images and temple furnishings like stupa crowns.  A couple of dilapidated buildings remain around the former palace area, but most of the remains of the old city are stupas and monasteries, none very ancient and most relatively new,

      No two stupa shapes are alike, though, and besides the customary white or gold color, Amarapura stupas can be, wholly or partly, red, yellow, 

painted stupe in Amarapura

blue-green and light green.   The temples tend to have wide fronts and a proliferation of statues, most of them lying on the north and east sides of Taungthaman Lake.  This picturesque body of water is adjacent to the old city site and in the dry season is often active with boats and fishermen on the water and farmers working on the shore.

       Spanning the southern portion of the lake is Amarapura’s most famous relic—U Bein Bridge.  Using 1060 wooden posts taken from the demolished royal palace in Ava, it starts from the Maha Ganayon Kyaung monastery, the residence of a few thousand monks on the west bank, and runs 1.2 kilometers to the other side, terminating a short walk from one of the area’s finest temples—Kyauktawgyi Paya.  It is the longest teak footbridge in the world and still in regular use, with five covered rest houses at regular intervals.  Monks from the temples at either end cross the bridge in the morning with their begging bowls, fishermen cast lines from it and villagers carry goods or push their bicycles across it all day, but especially in the late afternoon.

U Bein Bridge, Amarapura

       How much more active it might have been when Amarapura was still the capital is a matter of speculation.  It’s nice to imagine royal processions marching across the bridge on state holidays or perhaps military units dashing over it en route to a battle site, but there are no eyewitness accounts from the past to verify such a vision.  But in1860 the bulk of the city’s population had relocated to Mandalay, leaving only the people of Taungthaman village and the monks with any need for it.  Though heavy monsoon rains could fill the otherwise shallow lake to a level as high as the bridge, its solid initial construction has assured its durability from the beginning.

Kyauktawgyi Paya

villager on the U Bein Bridge

       Mandalay’s layout and architecture followed the forms established by previous capitals.  Its royal palace was modeled on the ones at Ava and Amarapura.  A moat surrounded its rectangular compound, as at Shwebo and Ava.   Its temples and towers featured the slim, multi-tiered steeple like that used at Ava’s Bagaya Kyaung.  Stupa shapes copied those erected in prior centuries.  And the temples and stupas scattered across heavily forested Mandalay Hill resembled one of the similarly speckled hills of Sagaing. 

       Mandalay, of course, unlike its predecessors, continued to grow long after its termination as a royal capital.  It may be too congested now for some to enjoy its attractions undisturbed.  If so, or if you are curious to see the original models for these sights, three former royal cities, quiet, interesting and atmospheric, lie just a short distance downriver.

Thaungtaman Lake beside Amarapura

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