Asian Theatre Journal

This co-edited volume takes strides in object theatre's performance history, and does additional service by interrogating gender issues, past and present. The book shows that writing about puppetry and women is necessary, especially as the work of women in puppetry accelerates internationally. Readers may not agree with all viewpoints; the authors themselves are far from uniform in their sentiments or approaches. But using the lens of gender (which some of the female creators included do not see as a substantive issue in their work), the book delves into deep issues. Authors discuss both how the female body/voice is made visible (by an object performed by a manipulator of any sexuality via stereotypes) or invisible (noting masking may allow women, otherwise culturally excluded from public displays, to perform). Narrative content, women as performers, and other topics get attention. A number of contributors report how today heritage forms that were traditionally all male begin to open to women as men leave traditional arts for more lucrative/modern pursuits.

The width of coverage (both geographical and ideological) rather than gender focus itself is perhaps the greatest strength of this book: the editors have enabled the voices of artists and scholars beyond normative Anglophone theatres. Therefore, much of the information is [End Page 260] fresh as well as timely. The editors offer deep dips into little documented areas including Iranian, Turkish, Burmese, and Taiwanese puppeteers.

The first section of the book, edited by Alissa Mello, deals mostly with theory. As opposed to the limited contemporary Euro-American feminist view on what "woman" means, in this text diverse writers define the term for themselves. For example, Laura Purcell-Gates "The Monster and the Corpse: Puppetry and the Uncanniness of Gender Performance" (pp. 19–34) fits firmly into the Judith Butler camp of gender as construction and argues for the potential of an uncanny female puppet (not defined by stock "female" stereotypes of breast, hips, red lips) as a way to smash gender stereotypes. Purcell-Gates questions the hierarchy that makes "male" the default or "neutral" reading of an animated object by viewers. Here, Western feminist theoretical sources and interpretations of what "object" and "subject" mean for gender are at play. Using a more historical approach, Kyounghye Kwon's essay on kkokdu gaksi geori's love triangle scene uses Korean traditional puppetry to highlight the situation of women in Korea during the Yi dynasty when the kkokdu gaksi geori genre flourished. Kwon analyzes interventions contemporary Korean women and men performers make as they present this traditionally all male genre wherein the ideal woman (Deolmeori-jib) was silentsvelteyoung and the vociferous woman (the eponymous, complaining old wife Kkokdu Gaksi) was knocked off by her husband (Bak Cheomji). Kwon compares the current revisions of Anseong Namsadang group and Seoul Namsadang under Master Park Yong Tae, showing different approaches rethinking presentation of this now rare puppet performance with a patriarchal scenario that can cause discomfort.

Naomi Paxton (in an essay on Punch and Judy) also takes on the issue of how to deal with traditional wife beating scenarios to present heritage traditions for contemporary audiences. Paxton hypothesizes the possible interventions by female Punch and Judy performers during suffragette conventions in the early twentieth century (unfortunately scripts were not saved). Paxton shares interviews with contemporary women and male performers on how they deal with Punch's punching. While Britain and the Republic of Korea seem distant, this text highlights how the problems of contemporizing heritage puppet forms are actually related.

Religious restrictions on female performance emerge in discussing Muslim area theatres. For example, in both the essay on Iran by Salma Mohseni Ardehali and Turkey by Deniz Başar, the authors discuss cultural-religious stances that traditionally kept women out of performance. Now, however, puppetry may facilitate entry. When [End Page 261] women artists are masked by the booth and use puppets and not their bodies, this allows them to perform and present diverse materials. In contemporary Iran, Ardehali in "Whispering Women, Shouting Puppets: Women and Puppetry in Iran" (pp. 115–125) discusses the emergence of women as part of academic puppet theatres, first in relation to performances for children in 1972. Ardehali details interesting recent performances of House of Bernarda Alba (2010) and Mother Courage (2014) by Zahra Sabri which take on Iranian women's issues using Western scripts, discussing sexual repression or suffering in a war culture from an Iranian woman's perspective. In another example, Maryam Moini worked with the controversial theme of abortion in a 2014 autobiographical production titled Maryam.

Başar also feels puppets allow freedom as she discusses a production in Istanbul in which a group of female artists dealt honestly with women's sexuality (Modes of Pleasure); the use of figures accommodated display of breasts, thighs, and sexual longing that would never have been possible for actresses. Başar notes the production "created a singular space for engagement of a taboo subject by the audiences" (p. 44). In an interview, the group's leader, Candan Seda Balaban, joked that if actresses rather than puppets were on stage, the women who performed might have been lynched.

The loss of heritage practitioners in places like Myanmar opens up opportunities for women, states Jennifer Goodlander, discussing women who have taken significant places in the traditional marionette theatre (yokethay) since the late twentieth century. In the essay "Erasure, Intervention, and Reconstruction: Imagining Women Puppeteers in Myanmar" (pp. 66–82), Goodlander notes ironically the opportunity for female empowerment she sees in the Htwe Oo Myanmar Company of Yangoon, where several women are now active, "may have risen out of the diminished value for such traditional arts" (p. 77). This seems parallel to the Japanese case Claudia Orenstein examines in "Class, Gender, and Ritual Puppetry: Negotiating Revival for the Hakomawashi Puppeteers of Tokushima, Japan" (pp. 101–114). Orenstein follows the work of Nakauchi Masako, a female performer who, with her women musicians, tours the rural Tokushima area during the New Year season to visit approximately 1,000 homes, revitalizing what was formerly an allmale ritual art. Nakauchi does the annual blessing using the iconic characters of Okina, Senzai, Sanbasō, and Ebisu. Orenstein notes that the same characters show up in forms like bunraku, nō, and kabuki. Nakauchi combines social work, performance skill, and community heritage in her touring performances. As well as keeping an important art alive, Nakauchi champions the rights of the low caste burakumin traditionally associated with this heritage art. Orenstein argues this [End Page 262] contemporary female practitioner exists in a lineage that "connect[s] her to a long heritage of women in Japan serving as conduits for the divine and charged with sacred rites and performances" (p. 113). Another essay written by Heather Dreyer on three important African women puppet masters—Werewere Liking, Vicky Tsikplonou, and Adama Lucie Baccoby—shows how these significant figures are using their craft to empower and represent women's issues.

Cariad Astles edits a section in which seven well-chosen contemporary artists share their own thoughts on work: these include, among others, the important New York based artist Theodora Skipitares (who has been affected by her work in India and Southeast Asia), South Africa's Janni Younge who has worked with Handspring and now runs her own company, and Indonesia's Maria Tri Sulistyani, whose bunraku-like production on the 1965 killings of Indonesian "communists" is discussed. Parmeres Silanka from Kenya, Ana Alvarado from Argentina, and Chia-yin Cheng from Puppet and Its Double in Taiwan also share their intents. These statements illuminate the authors' artistic agendas.

The co-editors end the introduction saying: "We hope that this book is a provocation to further critical and historical scholarship; a beginning not an end" (p. 14). Readers will surely be inspired by this text, which places women manipulating objects front and center. Future authors will surely reference this work as they continue conversations on gender and object performance.