[ Myanmar Marionette Theatre ]

Myanmar Marionette Theatre is dedicated to protecting Myamar string puppetry that is traditional and unique. Founder of the troupe, Ma Ma Naing mentioned, “art and culture are the most crucial aspects to a country. If we lose our traditional cultural heritage, our entire ethnicity may also disappear.” She believes that it is important to challenge modern entertainment and Western influence. New creations should be based on tradition. A nation’s identity, image and dignity on the global stage are also tied to its culture.

Traditional Myanmar marionette accentuates dialogues. It relies on using poetry to depict the scenes. There is no backdrop for traditional marionette performances in Myanmar. The show requires the audiences’ imaginations. Sound is the most important medium to draw their attention and bring out their imaginations as audiences in the past “listen to" instead of “seeing” the shows. Therefore, in traditional performances, narrators are more senior than puppeteers.

However, Ma Ma Naing noticed that contemporary audiences are no longer satisfied with the words, and focus more on the skills. As a result, Myanmar Marionette Theatre produced a modern performance based on traditional puppetry, and adopted pop music that was popular among young audiences. Some of their shows replaced traditional dialogues with music and they found huge success in such transformation.

Myanmar Marionette Theatre 致力於保護傳統且獨特的緬甸偶戲，Ma Ma Naing 提到：「藝術和文化對於一個國家來說是最重要的，如果我們喪失了我們的傳統文化遺產，我們的族裔可能就會消失了。」因此她認為對抗現代娛樂以及西方的影響是非常重要的，新的創作也是基於傳統，同時在國際上的身份、形象和尊嚴，也跟文化有非常大的關係。

仰賴「詩」去描述場景。傳統緬甸偶戲演出沒有布幕，必須完全仰賴抓住觀眾的想像，而聲音是抓住觀眾注意力、帶領觀眾想像的主要媒介，因為以前的觀眾是來「聽」，而不是來「看」表演的。因此傳統演出中，配音員會比操偶師更資深。

然而 Ma Ma Naing 觀察到現在的觀眾已經不再滿足於聽那些文字，而且也更聚焦在操作技巧。Myanmar Marionette Theatre 奠基於傳統偶戲，創作了一齣現代演出，使用在觀眾和學童之間很流行的音樂。有些演出則以歌曲取代傳統的對話，並發現這樣的做法很成功。