For people who don know what Bunraku is, what exactly is it and were there sources that you drew on for inspiration to do Pooh that were of Japanese origin?
Well, here’s how it works. Bunraku is actually, like everything in Japanese culture, a very specific discipline. So we are using the Bunraku-style, but we’re not really Bunraku. Bunraku was actually I think the name of a man, and the puppets were named after him. He had a puppet theater 300 years ago that used this style. The style specifically is a puppet that is puppeted by a team of people rather than a hand puppet, so there are three people standing behind the puppet, making it work. It’s an extremely creative, rich way to do puppetry because it’s three creative minds that are puppeting that puppet. There’s another variation of it called Czech Black Theater, which is a Czechoslovakian adaptation of Bunraku. In Czech Black Theater, they do an interesting thing – if you remember Topo Gigio? Yes. Topo Gigio was Czech Black Theater. Oh. What they do is they create a black backdrop that’s usually Duvatine, and then the puppeteers wear black. They shoot a lot of light on the foreground o
