The Puppet & Its Double Theater
The Puppet as a metaphor: The role of puppetry in life
The Puppet as a metaphor: The role of puppetry in life
Launched in 1999, The Puppet and Its Double Theater is dedicated to an experimental approach and a belief that all possible things can be formed into puppets, exploring the possibilities of puppetry in contemporary performing art.
The Puppet and Its Double is known for filling puppets with souls and looking into the interactions between real persons and puppets so as to find new interpretations of puppet performance.
The group incorporates various forms of puppetry, including glove puppets, string puppets, rod puppets, table-top puppets; its performance also draw techniques and inspirations from shadow theater and co-staging actors and puppets.
With professional and delicate puppetry skills, the Puppet, and Its Double brings forth an imaginary space that humans alone cannot realize. The group has received numerous invitations to perform at international art festivals and is a distinctive group of contemporary Taiwanese theater that crosses many boundaries.
The Selfish Giant
In an eternally frozen garden, the Giant needs to find the smile to defrost the frigid winter.
Die on that Day
A dark yet humorous puppet collage that places eight lives—each driven to the edge by the pressures of contemporary society—onto the cold dissection table, where puppeteers act as forensic examiners to trace each body’s final destination.
The Selfish Giant is a well-known fairy tale written by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) for his little son. Despite its insinuated undertone, the story contains deep love for the world and the wisdom of life.
The fragility of children and flowers is used to contrast the powerfulness of the Giant, but the Giant, with such strength, needs the children to defrost the frozen garden.
The Selfish Giant
Puppet & Its Double is skilled in leading the audience into the magical forest using exquisite puppet mechanism and following the poetic journey which not only allows children to admire aloud, but also silently contemplate. The playfulness, curiosity and joy of adults are also awakened.
You are invited to enjoy this poetic classical fairy tale, and witness how the tough Giant breaks the ice and snow, and welcomes spring into his garden through the power of sharing and love.
The Selfish Giant
Director: CHENG Chia-yin
Music Design / Live Musician: LUO Fei-tsuei
Stage/Puppet Design: YEH Man-ling
Stage/Mechanical Design: YU Meng-ju
Lighting Design: Helmi FITA (Singapore)
Costume Design: WANG Yi-ching
Storyteller: LIU Yu-jane
Actor: YANG Bo-wei, WEI Lin-chuan
Die on that Day is a theatrical art meditation co-produced by Puppet and Its Double Theater and National Theater & Concert Hall. Using death as its theme and in collaboration with live musician WANG Yu-jun, the company explores the confessions of social outsiders at the final moments of their lives—through eight collage vignettes adapted from social news media.
In a cold dissecting room, puppeteers act as forensic examiners, tracing each body’s final destination in life, full of craziness and bizarreness. Through meticulously crafted puppets, whose distorted limbs and soft-material textures evoke contradictory sensations of warmth and coldness, the performance takes a dark yet humorous look at the intriguing psychology of the human mind. It reflects situations and hardships of life that elevate reality to a supernatural level: how a character is defeated by life’s pressures, and shows their weakest moments.
Die on that Day
As an epitome of individual difficulties within contemporary society, the play invites everyone into a wild realm where reality and fictionality intertwine. The operating table in the morgue becomes a theatre stage; the puppet master explores the soulless body like a lab technician — sparking vivid imagination about what remains when the soul leaves the physical body.
Die on that Day
The implied dark humor is like a surprise gift that makes you scream with excitement when you open it.
─Heng Ping, Distinguished Professor, Taipei National University of the Arts
What emerges in the puppets are tools that can challenge and revolutionize the status quo of society. This is one of the aspects why contemporary puppetry is able to create more possibilities than other forms of theatre
─LIN Zong Wei, Reviewing Performing Arts Taiwan
Die on that Day
Producer: TSENG Li-chen
Director & Concept: CHENG Chia-yin
Composer & Live Music: WANG Yu-jun
Scriptwright & Director Assistant: KUO Pin-chen
Puppet Design & Building Master: YU Meng-ju
Costume Design & Fabric Sculpture: WANG Yi-ching
Set Design & Technical Director: YU Ray-pei
Lighting Design: Helmi Fita
Media Design: SUN Min
Co-creation & Performer: LU You-tien, LIN Hsiao-han
Puppet Building: LI Feng-Cheng, TANG Beier
Makeup: AMY CHIC Hair & Makeup Studio
Stage Manager: LIN Chien
Sound Technology Designer: CHEN Adam
Touring Personnel: 9 persons (Performers ×4, Director x1, Stage Manager x1, Lighting ×1, Sound ×1, administrative manager x1)
Performance Fee: 5,000 USD for the first show, 3,500USD/per show after the first show
Program Duration: 60 minutes with no intermission
Stage Dimensions: 10m wide x 8m depth x 5m height (meter)
Tech Spec:
Stage
Props
Lighting & Power
Sound
Others
Additional items needed on location
Set Up/Move out: Set up: 16 - 24 hrs; move out: 3 hrs
Available Dates: 2027 - 2028
Touring Personnel: 9 persons (Performers ×2, Live Musician ×1, Director ×1, Administrator ×1, Stage Manager ×1, Lighting ×1, Sound ×1, Video ×1)
Program Duration: 80 minutes
Tech Spec:
Stage
Freight
Lighting & Power
Sound
Set Up/Move out: Set up: 3 days; move out: 4 hrs
Chichester Festival Theatre, Chichester, UK
FMTM 2027, Charleville-Mézières, France
FIAMS 2027, Quebec, Canada (TBC)
Casteliers International Festival 2027, Montreal, Canada (TBC)
Veszprem International Puppet Festival for Adults, Veszprem, Hungary (TBC)
GeorgeTown Festival, Penang, Malaysia (TBC）
Charleville, France
New Deli, India
Center for Puppetry Arts, Atlanta, USA
Asia Society Texas Center, USA
National Kaohsiung for the Arts, Kaohsiung
Well Spring Theater, Taipei
Wa Theater, Tainan Public Library, Tainan
Barn 169 Theater, Taoyuan
The Nightingale
La Boutique Fantasque
On the Edge of Reality
Homecoming
