PROFILE
My name is Amy Trompetter, and I am a puppeteer from NY. I am raising airfare to fly to Jakarta to support three young, activist theater companies.
HOW DID THIS BEGIN?
Recently I collaborated with Thai and Burmese actors and puppeteers at Empty Space Chiang Mai and Gitameit Music Centers Yangon and Mandalay. The video clip shows the mix of delicate traditional marionettes of Htwe Oo Myanmar and crude large-scale free-form masks inspired by work with the Bread and Puppet and Redwing Blackbird Theaters. That collaboration, "The Four Puppets" was featured at a Burmese contemporary theater festival in Yangon, and welcomed for its iconoclastic mix.
WHAT CAME NEXT?
I toured Burma in 2011 with a large scale puppet/new music piece. Now I have been invited to travel to Jakarta to join the three young theater companies from Burma, Indonesia and Thailand for the second phase of their project, UNDER AFTER and IN BETWEEN. The name, given by Empty Space director Manuel Lutgenhorst, refers to moving out from under artistic repression in the three countries. Company members develop theatrical images and metaphors that cloak experience to ignite response, as politics and policies shift between dictatorships, autocracies and democracies. See Taring Padi video clip from phase one of UNDER AFTER and IN BETWEEN: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XvP2YHYMtI&feature=youtube_gdata_player
WHAT IS THIS PROJECT?
Thukama Khayee Thee, Taring Padi and Makhampom theater companies are meeting from Septmeber 8-23 in Yoyakarta to show each other recent works. They are also collaborating on a new piece about Kulan Progo farmers, on Java's South Coast, who are resisting the iron mining company's threats to usurp land cultivated by families for generations. The goals of the project are to visit these farmers, create new works using music, theater, graphics and puppetry, and to finally bring new approaches to theater back to communities at home.
WHERE DOES IT LEAD?
While in each other's company in Yogyakarta, we can plan future projects. UNDER AFTER and IN BETWEEN is preparing for a third phase in Burma in 2013. And I am developing a new project that begins with migrant workers, temporarily living in Yangon, and continues in their home villages in Shan State Hill Tribe areas of Burma in 2014. The solidarity of our struggle is especially important as Burma opens up.
WHAT DO WE NEED?
Goethe Society and Open Space Institute generously provided funding for the UNDER AFTER and IN BETWEEN project and travel expenses for participants from Southeast Asia. Recently invited, I am raising my own travel money of $2500. This covers air fare and expenses from NY to Jakarta and then to Yogyakarta and back.
WHAT DO YOU GET?
Each donor can use this link http://www.ustream.tv/channel/emptyspacechiangmai to follow a live feed of our project. This feed will be available, as possible, onsite during the worshop and performances in Indonesia, and as a permanent archive thereafter. Empty Space director, Manuel Lutgenhorst, has promised to edit footage of the project and to put together a DVD and a booklet with text and photos of the process and final piece. If you cannot donate and are interested, follow the project on the link above or contact amy.trompetter@gmail.com. I am happy to send relevant updates as our work progresses. And please spread the word about this campaign. Thank you!
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