Tradition
Sbek Touch
Sbek Touch is the Khmer small shadow theater, in which leather puppets with movable limbs are played behind a lit cloth screen.[1][2] The name sbaek touch means "small leather," and the form is also called ayâng, "puppet."[2] Shows take place at night to the music of a Pinpeat ensemble.[1] Their stories come from Khmer folktales and daily life, not from the Reamker told by its larger relative, Sbek Thom.[1]
Origins and genres
Khmer shadow theater is counted as two genres, Sbek Thom and Sbek Touch,[1] or as three, with the colored-leather sbaek poa.[2] Sbaek poa was a court form performed in daylight, and it fell out of use at the end of the 19th century or early in the 20th.[2]
The origins of Khmer shadow theater are uncertain. The newspaper Cambodianess wrote that it began in the first century and, citing the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, that it was influenced by India.[1] The earliest written record of nang sbaek is a Thai royal court record of 1458, and there is no firm evidence that shadow puppetry began in the Angkorian period.[2]
Puppets
Each puppet is cut from tough, lasting cow or buffalo hide and painted to suit its character. It is then fixed to two bamboo sticks so the puppeteer can hold and move it.[1] In Sbek Thom each puppet is cut from one piece of leather and does not move, but a Sbek Touch puppet has movable limbs, which makes its scenes livelier.[1] The arms are jointed, and comic characters have other moving parts as well. Some larger puppets show a whole scene in one piece.[2]
Puppets take the shapes of people, animals, trees and objects, as each story needs.[1] Men are usually shown in profile and women facing forward, as in Sbek Thom.[2] The figures stand for character types, so to some extent they can be swapped from one story to another.[2]
Staging
Like Sbek Thom, Sbek Touch is played at night in the open, in farm fields or in the grounds of a Wat.[1] Shows are also given in a raised, covered booth, where the puppets are worked behind a cloth screen with a light behind them to cast the shadows. Up to five or six puppeteers sit to work them, and a small pinpeat ensemble plays.[2] Fire from torches or burning palm fronds was the older way to light the screen; as of 2024, light bulbs or projectors cast the shadows.[1]
Performance
A show opens the way Sbek Thom does, with the sampeah kru, which honors the masters of the art, and a fight between a white monkey and a black one. Next, two farmers' buffaloes fight, and a policeman tries to calm them. This scene is largely improvised and played for laughs. The main story follows.[2]
In Sbek Thom the narrator generally keeps to the written text. Sbek Touch puppeteers talk to one another casually, in simple words, and now and then add humor, so children can follow the story easily.[1]
In Phnom Penh the popular comic hero is Ayang, a bald, potbellied figure who carries an axe. He appears beside Ayao, whose mouth is shaped like a beak. In Siem Reap the same role goes to Apok or Asou.[2]
Repertoire
Tales of princes on quests may be at the center of a troupe's repertoire. Examples are Preah Chinavong and Sang Selachey, the tale of a boy who came into the world joined to a magic shell.[2] Other stories draw on Khmer folktales and on how people make their living.[1] Non-governmental organizations have also used the small puppets to spread messages about acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), domestic violence and the protection of birds.[2]
Troupes and performers
In the mid-1950s the troupe of Thuy Biev owned 300 puppets and pieces of stage furniture.[2] In 1994 Duk Rouen owned 120 puppets, which he had hidden in a hole in a tree under the Khmer Rouge.[2] Only 50 of Srei Chen's puppets survived.[2] Even with ten more added in the early 1990s, his troupe could play only three of its six stories.[2]
Performers in Siem Reap have included Nap Pow, Nap Rin, Ty Chum, Hien Oun, Saw Van and Srei Chen. The Venerable Pin Sem of Wat Raja Bo, a puppeteer before he became a monk, worked to revive shadow puppetry, even from a refugee camp in Thailand in the mid-1980s.[2] As of 2012, most performances were linked to tourism. Shows paid for by foreigners also drew large local crowds who watched for free.[2]
The Kok Thlok troupe performed Sbek Thom and Sbek Touch at the World Puppetry Festival in Charleville-Mézières, France, in September 2011.[2] The Sovanna Phum Art Association in Phnom Penh lists Sbaek Touch among its shadow puppet theater, and names a small shadow puppet workshop among its projects.[3]
Khmer Art Action staged Sbek Touch at the open-air Svay Chrum Theater in Arey Ksat, a short ferry ride from Phnom Penh, in a show reported in April 2024. The audience sat on mats, and the show began about 30 minutes late, once the sky was dark enough.[1] The puppets told the Khmer tale Krai Thong and Crocodile Charavan over more than an hour, with a pinpeat band playing.[1] The show was part of a series of community performances that Khmer Art Action holds in Svay Chrum commune to bring Khmer arts to local people, above all the young. Earlier shows in the series presented Sbek Thom, a mixed program and Yike.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 Cambodianess, Torn Chanritheara, Sbek Touch Theatre: Darkness, Light and Shadows (April 13, 2024)
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 2.19 World Encyclopedia of Puppetry Arts, Robert M. Fowler, Cambodia (2012)
- ↑ Cooperation Committee for Cambodia, Suvanna Phum Art Association (organization record, undated)