Workshop Chinese Glove Puppets - Yeung Fai

A unique opportunity to discover this manipulation technique and learn with the master Yeung Faï, the last member of a puppeteer dynasty (five generations and several centuries of practice).

Yeung Faï is unrelenting in the pursuit of his art and has become a celebrated and unchallenged master of Chinese glove puppets. This puppet allows very elaborate acrobatic movements, including all kinds of pirouettes, also recalling the proximity, in China, between the performing arts and martial arts. The Chinese glove puppetry can be comparable to using a circus apparatus and involves intense physical effort. 
Thanks to his virtuosity and technical mastery, Yeung Faï is able to express most accurately the state of mind, temper and feelings of the characters he manipulates. His puppets become real acrobats, whose combats are punctuated by leaps, somersaults and other impressive feats.

A practical workshop on the initiation of the technical manipulation of Chinese glove puppets from traditional and contemporary perspectives. During this training, puppets brought by the master Yeung Faï will be used.

For: Puppeteers, actors, dancers, circus artists, directors, visual artists, performing and visual arts students
Number of participants: 12

Whorshop schedule: Friday to Sunday from 10am to 1pm and 2pm to 5.30pm
Working language: English

Fee: 50€
Deadline for applications: 5 December 2023

Admittance in order of registration after payment.

INFO AND REGISTRATIONS

The registration in the workshop is made by the duly filled application form in Google Forms or in doc file - in this case it must be send to: projectofunicular@gmail.com or atarumba@gmail.com

^{⇨ APPLICATION FORM: AT GOOGLE FORMS OR DOWNLOAD HERE (registrations are closed).}

The workshop programme of initiation to this technique covers the acquisition of knowledge about the history of Chinese glove puppet theatre, focusing mainly on the practical component, which includes various warm-up exercises for the body, fingers and hands:
-exercises to develop the finger muscles of hand joint flexibility;
-fingering and hand expression when manipulating glove puppets or working with bare hands;
-puppet movements, such as walking and jumping; passing the puppet from hand to hand; awareness of its weight; building a character and staging fights or other dramatic exercises.

"In our family, there have only been two professions for generations: puppeteer and teacher (...).
Nowadays, there's no-one in our family who does puppet shows any more. Puppetry is the art of our family and I don't want it to disappear after me (...).
The audience is not very familiar with the art of puppetry. They often think that manipulating and performing with puppets is something very simple. As a result, they don't see puppetry as an art form. However, this classic art requires a long apprenticeship. It's the desire to make this art known that gives me the pleasure of passing it on.
The art of puppetry combines gesture and movement with painting, sculpture and other knowledge (...).
Chinese glove puppetry requires great rigour, gymnastics similar to classical dance. The elasticity of the hands is fundamental: the phalanges, the separation of the index finger from the other fingers - the index finger carries the puppet's head and must be able to stay straight. But it's the correspondence between the puppet's movements and the puppeteer's breathing that requires the most work.
At the beginning, I give the students a good basis, acquired through exercises, a grammar of the fingers and hands.
I pass on what I've learnt myself.
It takes time for the students to overcome this first stage of learning, and then I can give them what is mine alone: the power of theatre, the nature of breathing, the sensitivity of life, rhythm, and in a way, the art of the actor."
- Yeung Faï, Manip - Le Jounal de la Marionnette

BIO

Born in China in 1964, Yeung Fai represents the fifth generation of a great family of Chinese puppeteers. Puppetry is one of the most ancient traditional folk arts in China. Yeung Fai was trained from the early age of four by his father, a Chinese master puppeteer who was a victim of the Cultural Revolution. This left indelible marks on the son’s art, unrelentingly pursues it, now an unchallenged master of puppet manipulation and making.
He currently lives in France and in addition to his work as a director, creator and puppeteer, he is a dedicated educator and regularly teaches at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette in Charleville-Mézières, as well as running workshops at other institutions in various countries.
A passionate artist, he presents shows full of poetry, humour and beauty, that surprise audiences of all ages all over the world.
At Theatre São Luiz and as part of FIMFA Lx21, he amazed audiences with The Puppet Show-Man, and at FIMFA Lx16 a documentary was shown about his life and career.

^{The participants should bring:
-Movement-clothes for warm-up exercises.}

^{Photography: Estelle Valente/Teatro São Luiz}