If you've never heard of the form of Japanese puppet theater called dogugaeshi, you are in good company: The ancient tradition remains an obscurity even to puppet enthusiasts in the know. But American puppeteer Basil Twist is about to change all that with "Dogugaeshi," his production currently on tour in Japan.
In 2004, New York's Japan Society commissioned Twist to create a piece based on traditional Japanese puppet theater, but he was hesitant to take the obvious route of riffing on bunraku, the most well-known traditional puppet drama which developed in the Kansai region in the 17th century.
"As an artist I am always trying to do something unexpected," says Twist. "So I was like, 'They probably think I am going to do bunraku, but I want to do something different.' I remembered seeing an exhibit of puppets from Awaji, and they had a video playing of one performance that had these sliding screens, these flashing, flipping, opening screens, and it was just 30 seconds but it totally captured me. I never forgot it. I thought, 'I want to find out what those screens are, that's what I want to do.' "