About the Performance

Reinterpreting the classic roles in glove puppet theatre from a female point of view, this performance revisits Wang Baochuan who foolishly waits 18 years for her husband’s return in Waiting 18 Years in a Cold Cave; Bai Suzhen who confronts the heavenly order to save Xu Xian’s true feelings in The Flooding of Jinshan Temple; and Pan Jinlian who, regardless of the morals of the time, pursues her true feelings, in Wu Song Fights the Tiger. The tears of these three women are transformed into a “soup” as a symbol of forgetting and rebirth, in a narration featuring “shocks to the soul” and a dissatisfaction with one’s fate.    

Using a traditional performance framework, the classic speech and hand articulations of glove puppet theatre and music from the Beiguan tradition are accompanied by a movable stage, cloth backdrops, and the use of light and shadow. This performance works to break open the public’s stereotypes regarding glove puppet theatre. In doing so, it hopes to develop a new traditional art form through this reinvention of glove puppet theatre.    

There were 1538 performances at the Festival d'Avignon Off 2018. The Soup of Reincarnation was one of the few singled out by the media for its excellent introduction to Taiwanese traditional theatre.