Today was a self-led practice again. We carried on working with the marionette techniques we learnt on Friday. I also tried learning a few of the other marionettes’ tricks. I tried catching the sticks with 林沖, as well as making him spin and flip. I also tried the monk’s (和尚) trick of swinging and catching his beads (this was the most difficult). Lifi and I kept working on the two 衙差.
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It’s the end of the first week and it’s been quite tiring. It’s much harder work to spend a day on marionettes than it is on shadow puppets – it’s just physically quite hard to hold them up for so long, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

We had the full day with master Wong, learning marionette techniques for 野豬林. I’m continuing to work on one of the two police-equivalent characters (衙差 – I think it’s usually translated as marshal). I learned how to attach a stick to the puppet’s hands (using a small elastic band, looped either side of the hand and over the thumb, winding the wrist-string around the long end). Apart from that, various ways of hitting things with the stick – both with the right hand holding the paddle and controlling the stick, or with the left hand holding the paddle while controlling a leg. I also learned to fall over sideways. The interesting thing about the marionettes is the way you move your whole body in order to make the puppet realistic – to fall over your drop your weight down to the side, not just your arms. The teacher is really incredible to watch in this way – he’s pretty much performing the role at the same time as the puppet.
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