Page 6 University Daily Kansan, March 9, 1982
Spare time
Piyada Vajrananant (left), Thai graduate student, shows her authentic shadow puppets to Janina Bain, Lawrence. Vajrananant performed a shadow puppet show as the opening event for the exhibit "Why Puppies?" Sunday afternoon at Spooner Gallery.
People-pleasin' puppets
By MATT DeGALAN Staff Reporter
You know the old story. The evil king kidnaps the beautiful wife of the noble prince, touching off a long and bitter war between the nations.
The plot was given a Thai twiist Sunday afternoon when pupeteer Piyada Vajarran, Bangkok, Thailand, graduate student, performed the epic Hindu puppet show Ramayana" in the main gallery of Spooner which was part of the "Why Puppets exhibit," which takes place at the Museum of Anthropology through May 14. About 300 children and parents attended.
The show was a traditional Thai shadow puppet play using authentic, hand-made Thai puppets. The petite Vajaranan sat crouched on a small table inside a black-curtained booth and expertly worked the delicate puppets between a white sheet and a strong light.
The light shone through the transparent, brightly colored figures, causing the characters to appear on the bamboo-framed white sheet. The screen glowed under nightlight streaming through a stained glass window.
Vajaranam, who is completing her thesis in children's theatre, smiled as she folded her interest.
"Puppets fascinate me. Everyone should try to handle a puppet and it to life," she said. "I kind of love it."
Vajaranam has been handing puppets since her undergraduate days in Thailand. She especially loves the important art form more popular with adults than with children. Traditional puppet shows, like the "Ramayana," are epic stories of mythology and history—like on Homer's *Epistle* staged with
"It's part of the nation and part of the people's lives," she said.
In Thailand women aren't allowed to perform
these epcies because they are considered sacred, religious ceremonies. Women can do only the less popular children's puppet shows. Vajraman and enthuisite, shrouded off the limitations.
"I like doing puppet plays for children," she said.
Vajaranard also said she liked teaching puppetry to children. Last semester she taught a class at the Lawrence Arts Center showing 7- to 11-year-olds how to make and use puppets. Many of her former pupils were in the audience Sunday.
Vajarantan said that she didn't get to perform as much as she would like and that she applauded. "I don't know," she said.
The exhibition includes puppets from around the world. Hazelle Rollins, a 1932 KU graduate and one of the world's leading puppet markers; and one of the most renowned collection to the Museum of Antiquities.
Rollins was a pupetter with an off-Broadway troupe before turning to puppet design and production shortly after World War II. Her husband, an engineer, applied her designs to assembly-line techniques, and the company grew.
In her travels around the world, Rolls collected puppets from Europe, India and the Far East. Some of the puppets are more than 100 years old. Almost all are hand-made.
'Making Love' boring affair
The exhibit is diverse, ranging from a hand-carved German Hansel and Greta display to the
The younger children spent much of their time admiring a three-foot, moving Santa Claus. Another popular display depicted a noble young prince rescued a fair maiden from an agre.
The children and parents browsed through the gallery filled with dozens of brightly colored puppets, but when the show started their attention turned to Vajaranan.
"I think people identify with puppets, and I think they identify with the puppeteer also," she said.
Contributing Reviewer
By MIKE GEBERT
Contributing Reviewer
"Making Love" claims to be a significant step forward, supposedly the first movie to present a homosexual relationship on the same terms as a heterosexual love affair. And I suppose it is progress, if progress means making a gay movie that is as musky and banal as you average love story.
Michael Ontakean, the dewy-eyed, lost puppy-dog star of "Slapshof," and Kate Jackson, the token intelligent woman from "Charlie's Little Shop." She has written Gilbert and Sullivan-singer, poetry-quoting upwardly mobile WASP. They spend their evenings with a charming old lady (the relentlessly charming Wendy Hiller) who quotes Rupert the English poet who died in World War I.
But there is trouble afoot (and if you know about Rupert Brooke, you might even guess what kind). Young Otonaie is troubled by something, he knows not what, and so goes searching, ever searching, for the thing that will fill the void in his life. What can it be? Well, it's homosexuality, but the way this movie portrays it it's more like the invasion of the body-snatchers.
Face sickled o'er with the pale cast of thought, Ontkean passes through gay nightsets, acting like Martin Sheen on his way to visit Marlon Brando in "Apocalypse Now." At last, he talks with a young writer whose work he likes, and his big blue eyes light up.
The writer is Harry Hamill ("Clash of the Titans," the TV "Stadu Longian") who we have seen earlier turning down a young man in his bed who wanted something more permanent. He's a ramblin' kinda guy, and when Ontkean wants the same kind of permanency, he kicks him out to the woods to run away, then amis (the movie suggests, and only partially refutes, the nasty idea that her career-oriented
behavior was responsible for Ontkean's changes; I don't think they meant it that way, though) and tries to work it out. But, and this is the only place where this movie shows anything resembling courage, Ontkean has "found himself," and doesn't come back.
The other big problem is believability. On-kean and Jackson, and even Hamin, aren't bad, but the lines destroy their 90 percent of the time.
TIMIDITY IS A BIG PROBLEM in this movie; everyone is so clean-cut and nice that you want to invite them all over to work this thing out. There's none of the nasty, bristlish and short voice I like, but it's a Zum Kipi documents in a more bengai way, this movie is as stereotyped as "Cruising." 'I don't know that much about gay life, but if someone told me that a tribe of Tasmanian aborigines, without any contact with civilization, considered past tastes, I'd learn their past-tastes, I'd know something was wrong.
THERE ARE REALLY ONLY TWO scenes that play true. In one, Jackson's disbelieving anger when the "other woman" out to be a man is quite forceful. The other is the first time Hamlin and Ontake make love; free of dialogue, the scene actually plays rather well.
Even that scene is hurt by the romantic, Hallmark cards cinematography, as the amber glow of the fireplace casts its light on their tender embrace (and that's about all there is to it, by the way). I've never seen a movie with so many earth tones before.
IN SOME WAYS you want to commend the good things about this movie—even if they are sometimes difficult to recall, apart from the actors—and in some ways you want to slam it for being such a gussy mess, as most grotesque as director Arthur Hiller's equally Wonder Breadish" *I Love Story*, a decade ago. The big story of a teenager who propaganda film like "The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin"—not too believable now, and only likely to grow less so as time goes on.
K.C. Ballet final Arts Festival performance
After attracting performing artists from around the world, the University Arts Festival is bringing in area talent this week to top off KU's five-week celebration of the arts.
The Kansas City Ballet will perform at 8 p.m. Wednesday in the University Theatre as the final live act of the Festival. The Arts Festival will officially end with the March 12 opening of "Chinese Calligraphy from the Crawford Collection:Sung and Yuan Dynasty Masterpieces" in the White Gallery of the Spencer Museum of Art.
ACCOMPANYING the ballet will be members of the Kansas City Philharmonic
For its Lawrence premier, the ballet will perform Act II of "Swan Lake," choreographed by George Ballanich, staged by Una Kai, the company's ballet mistress, with music by Techakovsky; "The Stillpoint," choreographed by Todd Bolender, the company's artistic director, with music by Debussy; and "Souvenirs," choreographed by Bolender with music by Samuel Barber.
York Ballet and one of the country's leading choreographers.
A young, 18-member dance company, the Kansas City Ballet is considered one of the fastest rising ballet companies in the United States. She has trained at Dokoudovska as the Kansas City Civic Ballet and achieved professional status in 1971 as the Kansas City Ballet. Bolender joined the company as artistic director in 1980, and the Kansas City Ballet opened in a performance in May 1981.
BOLENER BRINGS to the Kansas City Company experience gathered while he trained as a dancer and choreographer at the School of American Ballet in New York under the supervision of Ballanchine. Bolenere became one of the leading dancers of the New
Bolender choreographed many television productions in the United States, Canada, and
Germany, as well as musical productions on Broadway and in London. Prior to joining the Kansas City Ballet, he was director of the Istanbul State Opera.
Members of the Kansas City Ballet Co. rehearse a scene from "The Tea Dance" in preparation for their University Arts Festival performance tomorrow night.
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