Exploring Bunraku

As part of exploration the theatre style Bunraku we had to first master the canes used to control the puppets. We were given six points :

-One cane

-A paired connection

-No talking

-Maintaining eye contact

-Exploration of the space

-Listen to the music as an inspiration to influence your movement.

At first we just had to balance the cane on one finger as long as we could without dropping it. In order to evaluate whether or not we were successful we set our own personal goals, at first I was very ambitious and I didn’t use my forward thinking as to how hard it would be to balance the stick. So once I had tried it once I set a more realistic goal of 5 seconds, once I had reached that I challenged myself further to 8 seconds.

Afterwards we connected in 3s (we are only three people in the class) and so we had to master 2 sticks at the same time whilst exploring the space.

We then reflected on the exercise and started questioning why it was so hard to balance the stick, we found several points, it was challenging because:

-You lose the connection due to the lack of eye contact.

-You loser connection when changing your focus and get distracted.

-When you are connected with two people at the same time.

-Difficult to find the spiritual or central connection - you have to remember that it's not about the audience but about the presence of the doll, the connection between the puppeteers and the atmosphere created.

-You need good group dynamics, you need to be able to trust each other and be on the same level. 

We figured that it must be important for the puppeteers to train together and always work with the same people in order to have that special connection and understanding of when to move what.

When mastering the puppet you have to be very open minded and flexible in your way of thinking, you have to be able to compromise your own plan for someone else's for it to flow smoothly. You have to be able to think on the spot and listen to your inner voice and your connection with the other puppeteers in order for it to be successful.