Rolling Puppet Alternative Theatre: Made in Macau

The Personal Is Political: Made in Macau’s Interactive Storytelling Weaves the Epic into the Everyday

An Essay by Jesse Njus

Made in Macau 2.0 is a meditation on identity and generational shifts, employing ordinary items—paper, a plastic doll, an ink brush—as iconic objets de mémoire. Created and performed by Rolling Puppet Alternative Theatre (Teresa Lam Teng Teng and Kevin Chio), Macau investigates the history of Lam’s family, her birthplace, and her coming of age, an evolution that parallels Macau’s own transition from a Portuguese colony to a special administrative region of China. The spelling of Macau (rather than Macao) is Portuguese, a nod to the geopolitical position of Macau while Lam was growing up and to a society that is now in flux. When it was a Portuguese colony, Western goods that are now manufactured in China were “Made in Macau.” After Macau became part of China in 1999, the region lost its manufacturing sector and became a haven for casinos. The quotidian trifles that constitute the majority of the puppets in Macau highlight the innocence of Lam’s childhood memories while simultaneously serving as reminders of the period when physical products—rather than abstract wealth—were “Made in Macau.”

As the spectators are being seated, Chio and Lam outline a map of Macau on the bare stage using punched-out paper confetti. Once the observers are settled, Chio asks: “Does anyone know where Macau is?” This question initiates a dialogue with the viewers that continues throughout the play, as onlookers are asked to bear witness to its changing history. During this initial exchange, Chio folds a paper bird that he then flies around the stage—swooping, pecking at crumbs—until the bird is suddenly imprisoned by red light and the shadow of prison bars. The contrast between freedom and captivity is heightened by the simplicity of the puppet—an origami bird folded in full view of the audience. These juxtapositions are at the heart of Macau, where average objects convey the ideological conflicts at the heart of Macau’s changing culture.

While Chio sweeps up—erases—the map of Macau, Lam uses a large ink brush to paint “1968” on an easel. She and Chio pick up Budaixi glove puppets and reenact a farcical and, it turns out, fictionalized version of her parents’ meeting and escape to Macau. The traditional Chinese puppets are used to create a clichéd narrative; both the hand puppets and the escape to Macau are simultaneously authentic but stereotypical elements of Chinese stories, and neither holds a place in Lam’s family history. Lam studied puppetry in Prague and only later learned Budaixi from YouTube because—as she stated during the Q&A—Western observers expect it. Lam’s wry use of Budaixi parallels a later scene in which she recalls her arrival in Prague to study puppetry, a slapstick series of events that she dramatizes with tiny marionettes. For Lam, the dramaturgical purpose of “traditional” puppetry—whether Chinese or European—is comical, used primarily to critique stereotypical storylines through humor, while common commodities conversely illuminate vital motifs.

Instead of Budaixi, the traditional art form that Lam chooses to employ throughout the night is ink brush painting. Lam draws the Chinese characters for “pig” and “house” on separate pages, walking the “pig” around the stage before placing it in the “house” and explaining that this is the logograph for “home.” Puppeting words is an unexpected method of demonstrating the etymology of Hanzi and a brilliant way of bringing the language to life. Lam then hands the drawings to audience members as souvenirs. The term “souvenir” is frequently reminiscent of kitsch—the very items that may once have been “made in Macau” and are now “made in China.” In fact, souvenir derives from the French verb for “to remember.” Lam is asking her viewers not to forget and providing them with tangible mementos. The calligraphic souvenirs are emblematic of Lam’s puppet dramaturgy, one in which ordinary things transmit iconic significance.

Chopsticks are another traditional element of Chinese culture with an unexpected dramaturgical function. Lam and Chio—portraying Lam’s parents in their new home—use chopsticks to mime cooking and eating. The actions become more playful until the chopsticks are used to simulate sex, and suddenly there are little chopsticks (Lam’s older sister) and more little chopsticks (Lam’s older brother). However, when Lam herself is born in 1980, she is represented by a small plastic crawling baby, reminding the viewers both that she is the focus of the story and that her background, like that of Macau, incorporates Western elements.

The first memory Lam recounts is her excitement at celebrating her older brother’s birthday and her confusion over the lack of festivities and her brother’s somber attitude. Lam paints the date on the easel—June 4, 1989—and draws a TV underneath the date. Footage of Tiananmen Square is projected onto the drawn TV until one image of a tank breaks the ink boundaries and appears on Chio’s outstretched left hand. The tank projection travels up Chio’s arm, across his body to his right arm, and down to his right hand where a plastic model tank suddenly appears as though the projection has been reified. Chio flies the tank around the stage in the same path that the bird took at the beginning of the play, until the tank is imprisoned in the same red light with shadow prison bars. The tank stays onstage for the remainder of the show, functioning as an iconic souvenir to remind spectators that Tiananmen produced a lasting effect on Lam’s perspective, replacing the innocence of the bird.

Despite the continued presence of the tank, Lam and Chio hand out blue, green, and pink origami paper to the viewers and ask everyone to fold a boat, because childhood persists even in the shadow of historic trauma. As Chio spreads out a long white cloth and begins to cover it with boats from the previous night’s performance, Lam reminisces about her mother teaching her how to fold a boat that would sail on rainwater from the gutters to the ocean. Audience members start handing down their “boats” (whatever they know how to fold—from hats to “fortune teller” games, all are placed on the cloth river). This moment implicates onlookers in the production while complicating the stereotypical perspective of paper-folding as an Asian art form, since folding boats (as well as hats and fortune tellers) is also a decidedly Western practice. Lam folds the only red boat and places it on the cloth river before depositing the plastic baby in the boat. Chio pulls the cloth so that the boats sail upstage, and a flashlight provides a brief follow spot for the baby, eventually winking out and thereby signaling to spectators that Lam’s childhood is over.

Macau embraces the liminality of its nearly bare stage, transitioning not simply to the various locations of Lam’s life but to the conceptual spaces in which identities are created and transformed. “Traditional” puppetry appears only in specific instances—Budaixi puppetry for the introduction of Lam’s parents and marionettes for Lam’s introduction to Prague—while most of the puppets in Macau are deceptively modest objects. The simplicity of the items—chopsticks, a plastic baby, folded paper, a model tank, an easel with ink-brushed drawings—belies the profound significance invested in each artifact. Despite their quotidian nature, they represent the contested milieu of Lam and Chio’s generation, while also serving as an obstacle to censorship. Except for the tank, all the products appear to be apolitical. Images of Tiananmen Square and other protests are projected but rarely explicitly named. The performance ends in silence, with Lam and Chio holding the white cloth as projections move across it, beginning with protest videos and ending with still images superimposed with “We are the people of Macau.” Everyday things are difficult to censor, and projections leave no trace. Above all, Lam’s puppetry is collaborative, relying on the audience to endow familiar miscellanea with the import of iconic souvenirs from a disappearing but enduringly influential past.