The Portuguese Bookshop of Macau will be the next setting for Puzzle The Puzzle, the site-specific Miniature Theatre production that has been touring the world FOR the past 10 years
Puzzle The Puzzle is a miniature object and movement, site-specific theatre performance, presented in venues like bookshops, libraries, book cafes and alternative spaces, and created by Macau-based Taiwanese theatre director Hope Chiang.
The play was first performed at Pinto-livros bookshop in 2005 and has since toured to many foreign cities, notching up 48 performances and a nomination at the 6th Annual Taishin Arts Awards of Taiwan in 2007.
Based on the international performing experience of the cast, and in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the play, Point View Art Association (PVAA) is bringing the English and Mandarin versions back to Macau for the enjoyment of local audiences, with 12 performances at the Portuguese Bookshop of Macau from February 2 to 13.
Puzzle The Puzzle describes the mind map of a poet in the midst of his work and on a journey of discovery and creation. The two performers, Kai Leung and Hope Chiang, lead the play and perform together with a diverse range of daily objects including books, Barbie doll shoes, and little puppets just to name a few. With music composed by the Macau-based Spanish musician Victor Garnier, the multi-element work brings the audience into a world of imagination.
“The idea came about because of a lack of budget and was inspired by the world around me,” says Hope. I had been studying theater in England and decided to move to a small apartment, which, by chance, happened to serve as a closet for the winter wardrobe of a friend in Macau – an equally small territory – and that’s where everything happened.”
It was in the “smallness” of this surrounding reality that Hope came up with the idea of creating something “with small things that could be taken anywhere.”
The team that has accompanied Chiang over several years is also small, with only eight professionals, including the two actors who take to the stage. And the stage itself has very special characteristics: the aisles of bookstores.
“I thought that bookstores would be a good place for a theatre piece. Puzzle the Puzzle tells the story of a poet who lives surrounded by books, so I thought this place would be ideal,” Hope comments.
Erik Kuong, the show’s producer, says, “bookstores are more interesting than a theatre. Using the shelves of bookstores we created windows as if they were the poet’s building. Bookstores have more life than any theatre.”
“In Macau, for example, there are people who are not used to going to the theatre and productions are not always accessible to everyone. We bring this performance to bookstores to transport people to other places, where they can see different things and have easier access to them,” he explains.
Imagination is key to a show like Puzzle the Puzzle. According to Hope, “you must have an open mind that allows you to play with the situations. This production is made of fragments that the public collect to set up the story, as you do with a puzzle, where every piece comes together to build a complete picture.”
Puzzle the Puzzle wants to position itself as an alternative show. According to Erik Kuong, “contrary to what happens in commercial productions where audiences can almost always predict the end, and it’s one that everyone likes, in this production not everyone reacts the same way.”
“I like to compare this show to a durian: either you like it a lot, or if you are not told what it is, you think it’s very strange and don’t even try it.”
The producer and stage director of the play think that the greatest challenge of performing in bookshops is working around the shop’s opening hours.
“We don’t want them to open only for us. We’d like to be able to perform during opening hours, but as they are so small, it is often impossible. This time, the performances will take place outside the regular opening hours.”
The Portuguese Bookshop, the venue for this year’s Puzzle the Puzzle is a bookstore that, in the producer’s opinion, is the ideal size.
“Working in large bookstores is boring because we can’t reach the people who really created those stores. In smaller bookstores we feel the people more, the owners themselves get involved in helping us set up the scenes, without fear of changes to the structure of the bookstore, or that books are being moved around.”
