Bunraku Bay Puppet Troupe

Bunraku Bay Puppet Troupe (known since 2011 as "Bunraku Bay Puppet Theater") is an American puppet troupe that performs the traditional Japanese puppet drama commonly known as ningyō jōruri or Bunraku. Based in Columbia, Missouri, the Troupe is directed by J. Martin Holman, professor of Japanese language, literature, and theater at the University of Missouri, and the first non-Japanese to train and perform in the traditional puppet theater in Japan. The original puppeteers of Bunraku Bay Puppet Troupe were trained in Japan by members of three traditional Bunraku puppet troupes: the Tonda Puppet Troupe, founded in the 1830s in Shiga Prefecture, Japan; and the 300-year-old Kuroda Puppet Troupe and the Imada Puppet Troupe of Iida, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. In recent years most members of Bunraku Bay have spent summers training with the Imada Puppet Troupe.

The "bay" of the Troupe's name derives from its origins in the Bay State of Massachusetts, where it was founded in 2004, and the "bei" (pronounced "bay") of the Japanese word "Beikoku" (米国), which means America.

The repertoire of Bunraku Bay consists largely of traditional pieces from Edo Period Japan and includes the Kotobuki Shiki Sanbasō 寿式三番叟 (pictured right), a lively, celebratory dance piece that opens a program of puppet theater; Yaoya Oshichi　八百屋お七 or Date Musume Koi no Higanoko　伊達娘恋火子, the story of a young woman who must climb a fire tower and sacrifice herself on a snowy night to save her lover; Hidakagawa Iriaizakura　日高川入相花王, a scene both comic and exciting in which a young woman's raging jealously transforms her into a demon serpent; the Lion Dance or shishimai 獅子舞, a puppet version of the dance performed frequently at festivals throughout Japan; The Dance of Ebisu or Ebisumai 恵比寿舞, a comic piece featuring the traditional fisherman deity; and Keisei Awa no Naruto 傾城阿波鳴門　(pictured left), the most widely performed puppet scene in Japan, in which a woman meets the daughter she had been forced to abandon as an infant ten years earlier.

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