Introduction
In these reports, I’ve tried to stay brief and to the point, keeping the focus squarely on the performances themselves. My hope is not to scare readers away, but to invite anyone- of any age or background- to sit for a few minutes with some writing that opens a small window into the world of puppetry, as seen through Korea’s 2025 Chuncheon World Puppetry Festival. To explain why this particular performance landed on my must-see list from the very beginning, I need to share a little of my own background.
I didn’t study puppetry or performance at university. I hold a BFA in Drawing and Printmaking from the University of Central Florida and an MFA in Printmaking and Book Arts from the University of Georgia, but puppetry wasn’t something I was formally trained in; no classes, no workshops, no secret marionette handshake. Puppetry entered my life instead through practical, almost accidental means.
At the time, I was living in Athens, Georgia, teaching at UGA after completing my MFA there. Outside of college football and the university, Athens is best known for its music scene. I played banjo and old-time music- not as a performer, exactly, but I was orbiting a tight community of touring and performing musicians. In that casual college-town ecosystem, conversations between artists and musicians inevitably turned toward collaboration: how could we combine forces to make something strange, new, and worth showing people?
In the 2010s, Athens hosted dozens of music performances every week across a variety of venues and house shows. My friend Abel, an accordionist, had been toying with the idea of projecting shadow puppets while his tango/americana influenced group, Tango Hambre, played a setlist inspired by traditional songs and murder ballads. The songs would all be in Spanish, and the visuals would give narrative context to an audience of mostly non-Spanish speakers.
That idea collided neatly with my growing interest in crankies: boxes with an open face, inside of which a long sheet of paper is attached to two spindles. As the performer cranks one spindle, the paper scrolls across the window and winds onto the other. This performance form traces its roots back to the 19th century moving panorama– a kind of proto-cinema that predated film (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_panorama). By the time I encountered it, the form had been embraced by the folk and old-time music scene. Sometimes musicians used crankies to showcase narrative quilts (as in performances by Anna & Elizabeth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLSW9iZiyKs); other times, they paired them with shadow puppetry in backlit boxes (notably Katherine Fahey’s work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYrNBbVqQGE).
Our idea grew quickly and perhaps irresponsibly. We built a six-foot-wide, metal-encased crankie with a scroll roughly 30 inches tall and long enough to support a 45-minute performance. It took about a year to draft the story, create dozens of puppets, and hand-cut yards of vinyl scenery attached directly to the scroll. As we constructed the show scene by scene and song by song, it became clear we’d need two additional puppeteers working alongside me, while the band ranged from five to seven musicians.
Despite the effort, we always thought of the project as a one-off experiment- something fun to try, not a long-term commitment. We scheduled a single performance at Athens’ contemporary art space, ATHICA. I invited my friend, musician, artist, and Grammy winner Art Rosenbaum, along with his wife- fellow artist, banjo player, and photographer Margo Rosenbaum- to open the evening. I joined them onstage for one song, “Little Sadie,” and performed terribly. I was nervous. Visual artists are accustomed to a certain mercy: people look at your work for a few seconds, nod politely, and move on. Live performance is different. When eyes are fixed on you, you’re making a promise to not waste anyone’s time.
When I switched from music to puppetry, things immediately improved. Our show, Lupita’s Revenge, opens with a large shadow puppet of a train set against a backlit screen. At first, the audience isn’t quite sure what they’re seeing. They know it isn’t a television, but it’s also clearly not a bedsheet and a desk lamp. Puppetry is uncommon enough in the United States that most people lack reference points beyond The Muppets or Sesame Street.
After a few measures of music, during which the screen is illuminated but still, I begin turning the train’s wheels in sync with another puppeteer cranking our scroll of paper. Trees slide past. Railroad tracks appear and recede. Seconds later, another puppeteer blows smoke through a hidden tube, and the train’s smokestack begins to puff. Within the first thirty seconds, the audience audibly gasped and laughed. Behind the heavy box, crouched in darkness and unable to see the crowd ourselves, the three of us puppeteers instantly relaxed. That moment, the shared intake of breath, turned what had been a casual experiment into a career-defining project. We toured nationally, appeared on television, and were invited to the National Puppetry Conference before eventually moving on to newer shadow plays and other projects.
All of this is to say: shadow puppetry, especially through the crankie form, remains my first love within puppetry. Because I didn’t train alongside puppeteers and didn’t meet any until I was already semi-professional, I’ve always been deeply curious about how others approach the form- both onstage and behind the scenes. As a member of UNIMA-USA, I read an article in Puppetry International just before the Chuncheon World Puppetry Festival by Jungmin Song, Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut, titled “Intimate: The Puppetry of Moon Jaehyun and the Legacy of Kim Pernelle.” The article detailed the history of Moon Jaehyun’s shadow play, One Day, I Saw a Magpie, and mentioned its use of crankie mechanics. That was enough to put it firmly on my list.
Performance
One Day, I Saw a Magpie was not originally created for the Chuncheon World Puppetry Festival. The work was conceived by Eun Young Kim Pernelle, a Korean puppeteer who lived and worked in France. Introduced to puppetry in 1980 at the French Council in Seoul, Kim apprenticed with Alain Roussel and later studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette (ESNAM). She passed away in March of 2024, leaving behind a substantial legacy in both European and Korean puppetry.
The piece is inspired by the parables of the Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi and was Kim’s graduation work, which she toured extensively throughout Europe beginning in 1989 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi_(book). As her health declined, Moon Jaehyun sought permission to continue performing the piece. Kim and her family not only granted permission but encouraged it. Kim’s longtime collaborator, Yoo Hong-young, one of Korea’s first-generation mime and puppet artists, accompanied the work with drum and song.
Performed by Moon Jaehyun with music by Yoo Hong-young on the janggu (a traditional hourglass-shaped Korean drum), the show unfolded in a small black box theater. A massive scroll of paper, roughly nine feet wide, was suspended between two metal spindles, connected by a central brace. The performance blended puppetry, calligraphy, candlelight, and song into a luminous meditation.
Moon was dressed in a robe and had a small blanket laid before the shadow screen. On this blanket lay a bowl of sumi ink, a large paint brush, a candlestick, and perhaps some shadow puppets, but these may have actually been hidden behind the screen- I cannot exactly recall. Moon frequently disappeared behind the scroll, painting simple brush forms that sprang to life in flickering candlelight, shaped by narration and shadow. For this international festival, she presented the piece for the first time in a mix of Korean and English. At moments, she stepped forward and knelt at the front of the stage, whispering directly to the audience. The result was both contemplative and welcoming, captivating young children and adults alike. Moon illustrated characters, employed a small number of prepared shadow puppets, and at times stepped between candle and screen, using her own shadow as a performer.
Unfamiliar with Zhuangzi beforehand, I was reminded of the universal structure of bedtime fables. One parable, “Saiweng’s Horse,” echoes Western ideas of the “silver lining” or “blessing in disguise,” though with more humor and humility- closer to “you win some, you lose some.” A farmer’s horse runs away (bad), returns with many wild horses (good), the farmer’s son breaks his leg riding one (bad), and the injury spares him from military conscription (good). These shifts were rendered with spare puppets and live drawing: a single brushstroke darted across the paper, abstract at first, then, almost casually, resolved into a horse. At times, violent jabs of the brush punctuated moments of action, the ink itself performing.
Moon performed eleven fables in total, adding three new tales to Kim’s original script. In one, a philosopher wonders whether he is a man dreaming he is a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he is a man. As the performance neared its conclusion, the paper ceased to be merely a surface for ink. Moon began cutting into it- first a small window breaking the boundary between performer and audience, then larger incisions that threatened the stability of the scroll itself.
It is hard to give too much insight with just words, but fortunately, ATTO hosts a three-minute trailer of the performance on YouTube, with light captions in both Korean and English.
Closing Thoughts
In contrast to the first two performances I’ve written about, One Day, I Saw a Magpie operates on an intimate scale. Two performers in a small black box theater create a particular kind of attention- quiet, focused, generous. The piece moves away from the clowning often associated with contemporary puppetry and instead offers a contemplative, poetic evening.
While the show works beautifully for children, presenting archetypal fables in the familiar cadence of bedtime stories, it also exemplifies the best kind of family performance. Young audiences follow the plots; adults connect with the craft, restraint, and tone. It’s a reminder that puppetry, at its most refined, doesn’t ask us to choose between accessibility and depth. It simply asks us to look, and to stay looking a little longer.
Further Reading/References:
https://www.unima-usa.org/pi-57-table-of-contents
UNIMA-USA’s Puppetry International Spring/Summer No. 57
https://wepa.unima.org/en/korea/
World Encyclopedia of Puppetry Arts: Korea page
Chuncheon Puppet Festival website
https://www.youtube.com/@%EC%95%84%ED%86%A0-h2q
ATTO Youtube Channel
Author
Phil Jasen, Assistant Professor at Alabama State University (ASU)
Instagram Personal website
Hello, I am Phil Jasen—artist, educator, and puppeteer. I teach visual art at Alabama State University and was fortunate this past summer to travel to Chuncheon and Seoul. In Chuncheon, I participated in UNIMA’s (International Puppetry Association) World Congress and attended many performances connected to Chuncheon’s World Puppet Festival. I then traveled to Seoul, where I joined a workshop building a deolmi (traditional Korean wooden puppet) with master puppet builder and performer Eum Dae-jin, while also taking part in demonstrations of Korean puppet circus arts including dancing, drumming, and singing. Here I’ll be recapping Korean performances I saw at Chuncheon’s World Puppet Festival to share both the traditional and innovative work coming out of this part of the world. Feel free to reach out with questions or for extra details on my experience.