Ti-Oh-Oh is Chinese Theatre Works’ first glove puppetry production. This lively and engaging introduction to Chinese arts and culture for audiences of all ages showcases the Taiwanese hand puppet tradition’s range – humorous to romantic to heroic – in three scenes accompanied by traditional Chinese music:

“Ti-Oh-Oh” (The Sky Is Getting Dark) is a Taiwanese folk song describing an old man and an old woman working in the fields. Here we see the couple at work, and then arguing over the best way to cook an eel for their dinner.

“Mountain Love-Calling Song Duet” presents a young couple courting through improvised love songs. The accompanying music is an example of this art from the mountains of Southwestern China, where it is a very popular way of expressing the passion between young men and women.

“Little Hero” tells a story from rural China. In mountain villages, farmers are exposed to many dangers, one of which is wild animals. In this tale, accompanied by folk music, a child miraculously tames a tiger to save his village.

Glove puppetry is a longstanding tradition in China, stretching at least as far back as the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Like other Chinese puppetry styles, it is closely related to opera and folk music, using many of the same stock character types and sharing many themes and storylines with them. As in Peking Opera, hand puppets’ faces are painted to indicate aspects of their personality – bravery in black, malice in blue, etc.

Ti-Oh-Oh is performed in English by our company of renowned puppeteers, who bring decades of expertise in the art of puppet manipulation to a puppetry style rarely seen outside of China. We are the only professional puppet company in the U.S. presenting traditional Chinese hand puppetry.

The production is adaptable to many kinds of performance space, requiring only a well-lit 12’ x 6’ area for our self-contained stage, a sound system that can accommodate our portable CD player and microphones for our narrators.