Stephen Kaplin

Of all the Great Small Works company members the one I have spent most quality time with is Stephen Kaplin, with whom I spent the better part of two weeks painting and stencilling hangings for the festival whilst listening to his excellent eclectic music collection.
Stephen has led an extremely rich life in the realm of puppetry - he started off by studying it as a degree subject at the University of Connecticut. Stephen credits the 1980 UNIMA Congress and World Puppetry Festival in Washington DC for setting his journey in motion - fresh out of his degree it brought him into contact with many puppeteers with whom he would later work, including Julie Taymor and the Bread and Puppet Theatre.
It was with the Bread and Puppet Theatre that Stephen established the artistic connections eventually leading to the creation of Great Small Works and his other company, Chinese Theatre Works, which he formed with his wife, Kuang-Yu Fong. Chinese Theatre Works attempts to 'preserve and promote traditional Chinese performing arts and create original works that bridge traditional and contemporary, Eastern and Western theatre aesthetics and practices.' I went to see one of Stephen and Juang-Yu's performances for Chinese visitors at PACE University, and was fascinated to watch a full length shadow puppetry performance using puppets manipulated horizontally on an illuminated projector screen. With aesthetically traditional puppets and quirky, contemporary narration provided by Stephen, this was definately Chinese shadow puppetry being injected with a fresh approach.