Puppets, Trauma, and Performative Remembering: Flip Flops Theatre’s Lala: The Singing Bear (2019) and I Promised I Wouldn’t Cry (2019)

Abstract: This article examines two contemporary Taiwanese puppet shows, Flip Flops Theatre’s Lala: The Singing Bear (2019) and I Promised I Wouldn’t Cry (2019). Based on the experiences of political prisoners Tsai Kun-lin and Chin Him-san, the plays recount their arrest and incarceration during Taiwan’s White Terror era under martial law (1949–1987). Produced as family-friendly theatre, the puppet shows replace realistic depictions of violence with a magical world, making them accessible to young audiences. The article argues the two shows contribute to Taiwan’s transitional justice and that puppetry offers a unique “reparative reading” of trauma and historical memory, providing a way to revisit sensitive topics with emotional distance and facilitate healing. Puppets are favored to convey trauma narratives because of the impossibility to realistically reproduce scenes of horror, the flexibility of the puppets’ lives as a means of unraveling a contested history, and the puppets’ resistance to death and forgetting. In addition, the two performances were staged at the Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park, a historical site of injustice, further transforming the space into vessels for memories, enhancing the audience’s engagement with the past, and creating a space for collective memory-making. Essentially, the use of puppets allows for a multifaceted exploration of trauma, resilience, and the potential for justice.