Inside Job: I went behind the scenes at Shanghai Puppet Theatre
Photographs: Yang Xiaozhe
If you’re in the mood for some strings-attached fun, you could do worse than heading to Shanghai Puppet Theatre. Tucked away on the top floor of a mall and office complex across the road from the JW Marriott Tomorrow Square, it offers a free exhibition area showcasing puppets of varying levels of antiquity from across China and the world. It’s probably not going to top TripAdvisor rankings any time soon, but it’s an interesting collection with some beautiful specimens on display.
As the name suggests, there’s also a small theatre, and out the back, there’s an even smaller workshop where – if you ask nicely – you might be able to stick your head around the door and see the team of puppet pros bringing a range of characters to life.
The workshop looks a bit like a trophy room for Ghengis Khan. Dead-eyed heads are strung up on one side, while deeper in a collection of various limbs dangles from the ceiling beside incomplete torsos. Tim Burton would probably love it here.
Puppet producer and performer Feng Chengxiang talks me through the process of creating one of the puppets. The first step involves using a pre-sculpted mould to create a papier-mâché head. The heads were once made of wood, Feng explains, but these were heavy and therefore tiring to perform with; papier-mâché has been preferred for several decades.
The papier-mâché process is good, messy fun. It’s like being back at school for an arts and craft lesson as we layer strips of glueladen newspaper inside the mould. Feng says they go through around 15 sheets of newspaper per head. And people say print media is becoming irrelevant.
Once the head is complete and left to set, we take lengths of stiff wire and use pliers to shape them into ovals that come together to form a frame for the puppet’s body. I say ‘we’, actually I create a series of misshapen hoops that Feng then has to tidy up while the assembled team of costume designers and professional puppet makers look on in bewilderment. These wires are then papered over and eventually covered with fabric to form a corset-like body casing.
It can take as little as two to three days to make a basic new puppet from scratch, but it’s clear that at my pace we’ll be here for Master of puppets weeks before I can muster something that won’t unintentionally scar young audience members for life. It’s not long before Feng diplomatically suggests we move on to looking at how to operate an existing model.
The puppet is designed to be operated by performers from below, and under its clothing is a system of levers and catches that enable it to move its head from side to side, blink and open and shut its mouth. These are all manipulated by one hand, while the other holds two thin poles which guide the puppets’ arm movements; if the puppet also has legs these are often controlled by another performer.
It’s complex, and when I try it with the help of former Time Out intern Sophie Sun out on the theatre’s stage, it’s more than a little ungainly. ‘It’s the performers who really bring the puppets to life,’ says Feng, as he demonstrates a few ‘simple’ twirls and gesticulations. He says he’s more of a behind the scenes guy than a performer, but even so the puppet does appear to come to life in his hands – and as clichéd as it seems, there’s a kind of magic to it that’s impossible not to admire.
Shanghai Puppet Theatre Ciro's Plaza, 388 Nanjing Xi Lu near Huangpi Bei Lu (6334 5200).