Introduction
A puppetry festival is not a single thing so much as an ecosystem of activity. There are the large-scale productions, shows performers have sometimes spent years refining, invited to appear before an international audience as a kind of public culmination of long, private labor. There are also showcases for emerging artists, some stepping onto an international stage for the first time. And then there are the side paths: the informal, experimental, and easily missed experiences that unfold in the spaces between marquee events.
At this festival, those side paths were formalized under the name “Off-Fest.” While attendees moved between major performances, Off-Fest offered short-form street theater and intimate encounters tucked into the margins of the schedule. These were not headline acts, but they were often fun and surprising.
A group of a dozen local short-form performers were folded into an evening program for conference participants affiliated with UNIMA. One day, we traveled together to Nami Island, a well-known tourist destination reached by ferry and marketed as a kind of “fairytale village.” After disembarking, we were given a few hours to explore on our own. The island offered walking trails, food stalls, a museum of traditional instruments, and various outdoor games and activities- an intentionally gentle interlude before the evening’s performances.
The plan was to reconvene for an outdoor program of music, dance, and puppetry, but the weather had other ideas. Rain arrived steadily, and the performances were relocated to a large, tented area near the center of the island. We watched musicians and dancers take the stage, and then the space shifted again. What followed was an hour of decentralized, small-scale puppetry: more than a dozen short-form performers offering 1:1 shows, each audience member encountering the work alone.
Lee Kang-mi, founder of the Woojoo Project, describes this format on the group’s website:
“It’s a performance that only one person can see. The 1:1 performance format was branded as Woojoo Theater. In Europe, it is called ‘miniature theater.’ In South America, this performance style is called ‘lambelambe.’ I first saw it at the 2017 Charleville-Mézières World Puppet Festival in France. Fascinated by the 1:1 performance format, it was introduced to Korea in 2018 and developed for creative purposes. Since then, it has been distributed to many independent performing artists, who have created and performed their own works.”
Little Clown Woojoo Theater
Performance
“Woojoo” (우주) is a Korean word meaning space– not metaphorical space, but the outer space astronauts float through. The term feels apt. The work of an artist is often a solitary endeavor: hours spent alone in a home studio, building a body of work that may not be seen for months or years. Feedback comes late, sporadically, and sometimes not at all. Isolation can quietly accumulate, along with the anxiety of wondering how the work will eventually be received.
A Day at the Artist’s Studio Performance
The Woojoo performance I experienced centered precisely on this condition. The stage was a small wooden box, closed when I sat down in front of it. I put on a pair of headphones connected to a phone, which played a prerecorded narration translated into the audience’s language—English and Korean were both available. The performer introduced herself as a professional illustrator, speaking directly and plainly, as though welcoming me into her home.
As the narration continued, the box opened like a gatefold. Inside was a miniature replica of the artist’s studio: shelves of previous work, a small kitchen area, and a wall of art supplies. The performer followed the same audio I was hearing, timing her movements to it. She offered me a cup of iced coffee breaking any fourth wall barrier between performer and a passive audience. She invited me to remove tools from the wall and flip through tiny handmade comic books. Nothing was rushed. Nothing was theatrical in a grand sense. It was quiet, precise, and deeply intimate.
This was theater scaled to human closeness.
The main drawback of 1:1 performances is logistical. Waiting is inevitable. Even with performances capped at four or five minutes, a common strategy at festivals, a short line can quickly turn into a half-hour delay. Yet this hardly felt like a burden. Festivals like this gather people with shared obsessions from across the world. While waiting, I met puppeteers from Singapore eager to talk about art and activism and to introduce me to friends of theirs. The waiting became part of the event and a chance to bond with others.
In fact, this may be the great strength of decentralized, small-scale performances. Rather than sitting silently in a darkened room, audiences circulate, converse, and become visible participants. The festival breathes outward.
I was only able to experience one performance fully in the traditional 1:1 format, but I spent time afterward observing others from nearby. One piece featured a tiny interior set in which an elderly puppet lay connected to a breathing machine, the narration synced to the labored rhythm of a slowing breath. Another told a colorful travel story involving a hot air balloon. Another unfolded inside a miniature Korean temple, opening to reveal a folktale featuring a villager and a tiger.
Each box held a universe. Each encounter lasted only minutes. And yet, long after leaving the island, these small performances lingered; proof that scale has very little to do with impact.
Further Reading/References:
https://english.visitkorea.or.kr/svc/contents/contentsView.do?menuSn=351&vcontsId=111127
Nami Island (남이섬)
https://www.woojooproject.com/
Woojoo Project website
https://www.youtube.com/@%EC%9A%B0%EC%A3%BC%ED%94%84%EB%A1%9C%EC%A0%9D%ED%8A%B8
Woojoo YouTube Channel
Chuncheon Puppet Festival website
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.