Shadows, Strings and Other Things: The Enchanting Theatre of Puppets

Taxonomy

Code

Scope note(s)

  • May 16, 2019 – October 14, 2019
  • CURATOR: Nicola Levell (Associate Professor, Anthropology, UBC)
  • Over 250 puppets, old and new, from 15 countries, are illuminated in MOA’s dramatic new exhibition. These exquisite puppets—sometimes charming, sometimes a little bit scary, and always entertaining—come together and reveal our enduring fascination with storytelling. For thousands of years, knowledge holders and storytellers around the world have engaged puppets as a means to dramatize the human experience. Puppets have been delighting, entertaining and educating audiences of all ages, letting our imaginations soar. Puppets are the precious purveyors of our epics, dreams and satires. Enter into a theatrical world of kings and queens, demons and clowns, supernatural beings and more. Extraordinary stories and fantastical characters fill the stages, cases and multimedia installations of this enchanting exhibition. Whether animated using age- old techniques or digital technologies, puppets are manipulated by hand, and here you’ll discover more about the different forms of manipulation and animation that give them life: shadow, string, rod, hand, and stop-motion. With a focus on Asia, Europe and the Americas, the exhibition draws from MOA’s stunning international collection of puppets—the largest in Western Canada-—and reveals new acquisitions from China, Brazil, Sicily, Java, the UK and France. Shadows, Strings and Other Things is an immersive experience that illuminates how puppetry continues to evolve and innovate in the hands of artists and performers who keep the tradition alive. From graceful Vietnamese water puppets and comical British hand puppets to the captivating stop-motion puppet animation of the award-winning Indigenous artist Amanda Strong—the full spectrum of human resilience and creativity is on display.

Source note(s)

Display note(s)

Hierarchical terms

Shadows, Strings and Other Things: The Enchanting Theatre of Puppets

Shadows, Strings and Other Things: The Enchanting Theatre of Puppets

Equivalent terms

Shadows, Strings and Other Things: The Enchanting Theatre of Puppets

Associated terms

Shadows, Strings and Other Things: The Enchanting Theatre of Puppets

2 Archival description results for Shadows, Strings and Other Things: The Enchanting Theatre of Puppets

Ascending

2 results directly related Exclude narrower terms

MOA Magazine, Issue 07, Spring 2019

This issue contains articles on current and upcoming exhibitions, the new Collections Access Grant program, the release of the book People Among the People: The Public Art of Susan Point, Shadows, Strings and Other Things: The Enchanting Theatre of Puppets and related programs, Javanese puppeteer Sutrisno Hartana, the Ninini (Earthquake) dance at the Frank Nelson Memorial Potlatch, MOA's conservators Miriam Clavir and Heidi Swierenga, highlights from the MOA archives, the book Divine Threads: The Visual and Material Culture of Cantonese Opera by April Liu, and how to leave a gift to MOA in your will.