Article

Theatre

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Theatre

Theatre in the Malay Peninsula and Borneo encompasses a range of performing traditions, from Chinese puppetry to live opera, each embedded in religious and social life. The most extensively documented form in the Society’s literature is the Chinese glove puppet theatre, known locally as the Po te hi, which was brought to Malaya from Fukien Province in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and continues to be performed in the Hokkien dialect during religious occasions [1, pp. 40–41].

Origins, Staging, and Material Culture

The Po te hi is said to have originated approximately three hundred years ago in Chuan-chou city, Fukien Province, and was carried to Malaya by puppeteers who emigrated to settle in the peninsula [1, p. 40]. Unlike its earlier period, when performances were given during religious festivals and in amusement parks for Chinese immigrants, the theatre today is performed exclusively on religious occasions, most commonly in temples that lack the funds to hire live opera troupes for the annual birthdays of deities [1, p. 40].

Stages are make-shift constructions of rough planks with atap (woven palm-leaf thatch) or zinc roofing, open on all sides, measuring approximately three feet above ground, seven feet wide, eight feet long, and six to seven feet high [1, pp. 40–41]. The stage is positioned directly opposite the temple or altar so that the deity being honoured has a clear view of the performance [1, p. 41].

Puppets are cloth bags fitted over the hand, averaging eight to nine inches in height, with wooden heads coated in wax that were originally imported from Fukien eight to nine decades ago [1, pp. 41–42]. Facial features, particularly eyebrows and eye-sockets, define the character type, while face paint encodes moral qualities: red implies loyalty, black and green imply bravery, and gold or silver denote deity [1, p. 42]. Costumes follow a strict colour hierarchy, with yellow reserved for royalty, red for good characters of high rank, and dark crimson for traitors [1, p. 45]. Each troupe owns at least forty puppets, some as many as one hundred, ranging from kings to servants [1, p. 41].

Economic Structure and Social Standing

A glove puppet theatre performance costs M$250 per day, compared with M$1,500 to M$2,000 per day for a live opera troupe [1, p. 40, n. 4]. Troupes comprise seven to ten members, all of whom are usually able to manipulate puppets, sing, and play one or two instruments [1, p. 50]. In Penang, puppeteers, singers, and musicians are paid M$15 per night, while backstage workers receive M$14; the proprietor retains the remainder of the M$250 fee for electricity, transport, and equipment upkeep [1, p. 50].

Performers cannot sustain themselves on puppetry alone. Most hold two or three other jobs, including fishing, trishaw peddling, hawking, or playing the sona (a Chinese double-reed wind instrument) at temple festivals and funerals [1, p. 50]. The majority of puppet operators are in their late thirties or forties, many having left Hokkien opera troupes after marriage or when their voices deteriorated with age [1, p. 50]. Proprietors require performers to sign one-year contracts to guarantee availability, yet performers routinely quit or move between troupes, contributing to instability [1, p. 51]. The younger generation, for its part, prefers work with better pay and does not wish to train in what they consider an old-fashioned art [1, p. 51].

Music and Performance Conventions

The orchestra divides into a military ensemble of percussion and a civil ensemble of stringed instruments [1, p. 51]. The percussion section includes the toa ko (big drum), tiong ko (middle drum), sio ko (woodblock), clappers, cymbals, and gongs, while the civil section features the kak ngah hian (coconut-shell fiddle), kim ngah (moon guitar), and ji hian (two-string fiddle) [1, pp. 51–52]. The chhe (local term for the sona, a double-reed oboe) performs many percussion functions, including announcing the appearance of a king or saint and imitating the neighing of horses [1, p. 52].

The most commonly used tune is the chit ji tiau (seven-word tune), also called the li pian tiau (convenient tune), which can be employed in virtually any dramatic situation except extreme sadness, where the kho chit ji tiau (sad seven-word tune) is substituted [1, pp. 52–53]. Free-rhythm, highly ornamented, and melismatic tune types are hardly used anymore because they are considered very difficult to learn [1, p. 53]. No scores are employed; music is learned by rote, and middle-aged musicians today know only a few tunes and their names [1, p. 52].

A performance on the official birthday of a deity begins with a prologue: a thanksgiving ceremony known as Thaio Kah Kuan, in which a dumb white-faced character walks across the stage holding a scroll to welcome the audience and call in prosperity from the deities [1, p. 53]. A stage hand then carries the puppet theatre’s own deity to the temple altar and returns with a red packet and biscuits as a token of good fortune [1, p. 54]. The repertoire proper consists of four major categories of stories: the lives of emperors and generals, romantic love between scholars and beauties, tales of fairies and demons, and conquests of foreign tribes [1, p. 54]. Each performance lasts approximately three hours [1, p. 54].

Research and Documentation

Tan Sooi Beng’s 1984 article in the JMBRAS constitutes the first systematic written documentation of the Po te hi in Malaysia, drawing on fieldwork conducted in Penang in 1979–1980 for her MA thesis at Wesleyan University [1, p. 40, n. 1]. She explicitly notes that no research had previously been undertaken on the other two types of Chinese three-dimensional puppet theatre still performed in the country: marionettes, performed in the Hokkien dialect exclusively for the Jade Emperor, and red puppets, stick-manipulated dolls performed in the Teochew dialect [1, p. 40, n. 2]. Tan’s central argument is that the theatre is in terminal decline, driven by low pay, low social status, and the penetration of Western entertainment models, and she observes that audiences are now drawn mainly from children and the older generation [1, p. 55]. Her work remains the foundational reference for the form, and the absence of subsequent studies in the Society’s literature underscores both the urgency of the documentation and the fragility of the tradition it records.

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. Tan Sooi Beng (1984). An introduction to the Chinese glove puppet theatre JMBRAS 57(1): 40–56.