The hard-won story of the Chuncheon Puppet Festival

Kim Myung-hwa
The author is a playwright and director.

If the creation myths of East and West are any guide, humanity began as a puppet. God made the first human by shaping clay in his own image and breathing life into it. Humanity’s descendants, in turn, play with dolls and puppets as children. Perhaps through such play, children are reenacting, without knowing it, the divine act of creation at the root of their own existence. Or perhaps their dolls and puppets help soothe some distant, inherited nostalgia for the paradise humanity is said to have left behind.

The Chuncheon Puppet Festival, held Sept. 10 to 16, has ended. Launched in 1989, it is a long-running festival driven by the private sector. International performing arts festivals were also staged around that time to commemorate the 1986 Asian Games and 1988 Seoul Olympics, but they were one-off events. In the theater world, however, the Chuncheon festival became a pioneer by turning international exchange into a continuing tradition rather than a commemorative event. Its survival reflects the persistence of the artists who built it together.

Those were years when support and infrastructure for the arts were scarce. Kang Joon-hyuk, who had come to appreciate traditional puppetry while serving as director of the Space Sarang theater, spearheaded the effort with his brother Kang Joon-taek, then director of the Chuncheon Children’s Center. Puppetry artists including Kang Seung-gyun and Ahn Jung-ui devoted themselves to the project.

In its first year, the festival could barely afford to invite a single Japanese troupe. It gained momentum after establishing a permanent base, the Chuncheon Puppet Theater, in 2001. Last year, Chuncheon hosted the congress of UNIMA, the international puppetry association, helping the festival expand its global presence.

True to Chuncheon’s identity as a lakeside city, the theater stands by the water. It may not be a grand building designed by a celebrated architect, but it inspires affection. The city helped build it, yet funding was woefully inadequate. Founding members practically lived in sleeping bags in the lobby while supervising construction, and working puppeteers pitched in, helping one another as if in a communal labor exchange.

This year, I watched several productions at the festival that children and adults could enjoy together. Next year, I plan to join the “Puppet Carnival,” the festival’s opening event, and its parade, which surely traces its roots to Korea’s traditional gilnori street processions.

Walking alongside citizens and puppets, I will think about gods and humans — and about the efforts of finite human beings.