NEW YORK -- Puppet troupes from around the globe are taking to New York stages this month as part of the Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater. The Japan representative is the extraordinary yet little-known OtomeBunraku Troupe, an all-female puppet troupe which derives from the mainstream male tradition yet breaks from it in fundamental ways.
If it were not for the Japan Society's preperformance demonstration, New Yorkers might have been fooled into thinking that Otome is the mainstream.
Performing excerpts from two classics, "Yoshitsune Senbon-Zakura (Yoshitsune and the One Thousand Cherry Blossoms)" and "Tsubosaka Reigenki (The Miracle at Tsubosaka Temple)," the women use virtually the same panoramic tableaux, props, scripts and puppets as the male operators, whose performance tradition dates back to the 17th century, almost 300 years before the formation of female puppet troupes.