Flashback to some really cool marionettes...

Happy Flashback Friday, all!  After reveling in the fun of sock puppet Tyrone earlier in the week, I was thinking about other theatrical puppet fun I've experienced.  While rummaging through old reviews, I noticed this post from October, 2009.  This was a magical, incredible evening and I wish I could find a time machine to relive it.  Enjoy, along with the flashback Halloween photos I've posted at the bottom of this e-mail.  Boo!

10/09:  Went to Carnegie Hall last Wednesday night and saw the Quanzhou Marionette Theater, part of Carnegie Hall’s festival celebrating Chinese culture.  I think I’ve pointed out before that I love puppets and marionettes, so when I saw an article about this troupe, I was intrigued.  Thanks to my friend Layne, I actually got to see it!  Up close and personal!  Thank you, Layne! 

May I just say this was one of the most magical evenings I have ever spent in a theater?  Or concert hall, as it were.  Everything about it was just enchanting.  The music, the singing, the marionettes.  It was glorious.  I honestly don’t think I’ll be able to do it justice.  There were six vignettes, plus an encore that truly had to be seen to be believed.  There was amazingly complex singing.  Live musicians played authentic instruments, including the drum that you tune with your foot.  Some of the pieces were incredibly funny and some were incredibly moving.  The marionettes are on what looks like hangers, and the troupe would pull strings off the hanger, put them in a different spot, and do all sorts of things to manipulate the marionettes.  Really incredible.  But after a while, you stop looking at these wonderfully agile people and concentrate on the marionettes.  They become real.  I tell you, I was convinced that monkey riding a bike was real.  I was thinking to myself—look at that monkey!  Forgetting there was someone there making all this magic happen. 

 photo credit: James Estrin

One piece is especially still in my head:  the last vignette, before the encore with the monkey, was called the Lantern Festival, and it was just a parade of different marionettes, celebrating.  At one point, five older women marionettes came out and were singing of their wild pasts.  The puppeteers moved some strings around, and suddenly the marionettes turned upside down and they were all the young women in beautiful gowns!  It was magical!  You didn’t see it coming at all!  You should’ve heard the ooooos and ahhhhhhhs in the theater.  Oh, and one marionette, a drunken lout, picked up a pitcher, and drank wine straight out of it!  Soooooo amazing!!!  Oh, and the monkey picked up a guitar and started playing Spanish music!   I wish the company had done more than one performance—I would’ve made everyone go back with me.  If you ever see they’re performing around you, go go go.