Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

284 Chapter 10 Global Theatre Today
toured the world in 1998. In more recent times, puppets have
appeared in adult mainstream as well as experimental theatre,
in the works of Julie Taymor, the Broadway musical Avenue
Q (see the chapter titled “The American Musical Theatre”),
and the acclaimed 2015 religious satire Hand to God.
A magnificent joint production, presented in Los Angeles in
2013 in English and Japanese (with subtitles) by Tokyo’s
Setagaya Public Theatre and London’s Complicite, masterfully
combined puppets with both puppeteers and
actors. Entitled Shun-Kin, it concerns an eight-year-old
girl who, shockingly blinded as a youth, eventually masters
the three-stringed Japanese shamisen—the plucked
musical instrument of the kabuki theatre—and becomes
a shamisen instructor. What makes the play astounding
is that as she matures, Shun-Kin is represented by continuously
larger puppets, and eventually by a live actress,
all (including the actress) expertly manipulated by a
team of expert bunraku puppeteers. The puppets, puppeteers,
and live characters blend with haunting music
to create a mesmerizing, near-magical transformation of
both Eastern and Western dramatic techniques.
SITE-SPECIFIC AND IMMERSIVE
PERFORMANCE
Who says theatre must take place in a theatre?
Many plays today are site-specific: they are realized
fully in particular environments outside the traditional
facilities with curtains and theatre seats. Since the turn
© Stephanie Berger
Immersive theatre reaches a highlight
in Here Lies Love at the New York
Public Theatre in 2014, where the
actors, Jose Llana and Ruthie Ann
Miles, playing the late president and
first lady of the Philippines, Ferdinand
and Imelda Marcos, mix and eventually
dance with the audience. © Sara
Krulwich/The New York Times/Redux