About the speaker
Chia-Yin Cheng is a leading figure in contemporary puppet theatre in Taiwan, selected by Routledge as one of seven representative female puppetry artists worldwide. Working through a cross-disciplinary aesthetic, she has written and directed more than thirty productions that have toured fifteen countries and received numerous award nominations. Her collaboration with Jin Kwei Lo Puppetry Company, Soup of Reincarnation, won Best Annual Performance at the Golden Melody Awards for Traditional Arts and Music and was named among the Taishin Arts Award's Annual Top Ten. In recent years Cheng founded the Lize International Puppet Art Colony as an Asian hub for artistic development, and established a structured training system through the International Academy of Puppet Arts. She also published A Guide to Green Workshop, advocating environmentally sustainable creative practices. Moving between tradition, the avant-garde and green theatre, she continues to expand the possibilities and international reach of contemporary puppetry.
About the organisation
The Puppet and Its Double Theater; Lize Puppet Art Colony
Founded in 1999, The Puppet and Its Double Theater embraces the belief that any object can become a puppet. Through a transformative aesthetic shaped by magic and philosophical imagination, the company has developed a distinctive theatrical language marked by cross-disciplinary experimentation and refined puppet craftsmanship. A regular recipient of TAIWAN TOP recognition and multiple Taishin Arts Award nominations, it has presented work at major events including the Taipei Arts Festival, the National Theater and Concert Hall's International Theatre Festival, Festival Off Avignon and the Green Mountain Puppet Festival, touring across fifteen countries. In 2013 the company relocated to Wujie Township in Yilan County and transformed a disused granary into the Lize International Puppet Art Colony. Through international exchange, creative residencies and arts education, the Colony has cultivated a community centred on puppetry aesthetics and grown into one of Asia's representative platforms for puppet-theatre creation, development and exchange.
