Instead of a body: The animation of Japanese pēpāshiatā in COVID-time

Abstract

For a puppeteer specializing in the rare and beautiful Japanese otome bunraku, the story might have ended at COVID if it were not for a series of unexpected turns. First, there was a surprise primary school lockdown job making films of reading-books to beam into pupils’ homes; then, the sudden COVID precautionary ejection from the school building carrying an inadequate stock of books to continue the filming from home; then, the unexpected and possibly ‘barmy’ personal decision to write any extra books needed when the school stock ran out. Over weeks, my books, mainly drawings, were mounting up and intriguingly the filmed performances offered something extra, they became the stories and the images to mount on uchiwa rigid fans for me to play with. I rediscovered my ‘performance body’ in a ‘theatre of paper’ – small, private Japanese pēpāshiatā or ‘paper-theatre’. My body and brain woke up. The move from a Japanese-type puppetry pre-COVID (otome bunraku) to another kind during and post-COVID was happening. Lockdown was now promisingly creative. Directly out of the pain and suffering of COVID, and enforced restraint, a little known theatre practice was offering restitution.