Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral
Date / 11. June 2010.
Time / 20:00h
13. June 2010. 20:00
Location / Muzej suvremene umjetnosti
Marionette theatre company Youkiza (Japan) / Frédéric Fisbach (France)
European premiere
Marionette theatre company Youkiza (founded in 1635) is the oldest such theatre in Japan and one of the most distinguished in the world. It perfected the bunraku puppet technique, and recently it has modernised its repertoire with plays directed by Europeans. One of them, Frédéric Fisbach, has staged a work of the Singaporean writer Kuo Pao Kun, Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral, which will have its European premiere in Zagreb.
It is a story about Zheng He, the most famous Chinese seafarer and explorer, but also a man of our time. It is complex and multi-leveled: the actors narrate and serve as his “psychics“ in their own way. The arrival of admiral Zheng He to the island of Java is celebrated each year with a 10-hour ritual based on the Javanese marionette theatre. An important part of this project is the way a marionette, which carries in its idea the image of manipulation, is used. We see the performance and the string puller, the character and its representative.
By the interplay of the marionette and the actor on the same stage, the director breaks the viewer`s illusion that the manipulated object lives autonomously and decides on its movements, despite the fact that the mechanism of manipulation is plainly visible.
