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We talk to the creative team behind The Lonesome Death of Eng Bunker
Puppetry has been hugely visible (quite literally!) on the big stage recently, with some tremendous productions showcasing the possibility and skill of the genre. One of the most impressive was the sellout My Neighbour Totoro, which saw totally new audiences coming to the theatre and gave refreshing visibility to the talents of Southeast Asian performers.
Now two of the puppet captains from that show are collaborating on a brand new and utterly different production. We were delighted to speak with writer and performer Tobi Poster-su and director Iskander Sharazuddin about their uniquely fascinating show The Lonesome Death of Eng Bunker premiering at the Omnibus Theatre on 17 September.
Hello both. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk about your new show. Can you start by telling us who Eng Bunker was, and what happened to him?
T: It’s impossible to talk about Eng Bunker without mentioning his conjoined twin, Chang. Chang and Eng were two conjoined twins who were born in Siam, now Thailand — they originated the term ‘Siamese twins’. They were trafficked to America by an American and Scottish pair of merchant captains where they were exhibited to the public, but they eventually gained their independence and became quite wealthy exhibiting themselves. Their lives were too fascinating and complex to detail here, but the show is really about the only two hours of his life when Eng was truly alone, after the death of his twin brother.
Why did you want to tell Eng’s story through puppetry, and how did you set about devising the piece?
T: The show is about Chang and Eng but it’s also about the fascination they held — and still hold — for audiences, and their complex relationship to racial exploitation in the USA. Puppetry offers a unique way to explore their story, which is so much about the ways in which human beings fashion and control one another.
I: This show is a bit of a hybrid process, some of it text-based from written material Tobi has provided to provoke a devising process. Some of it is being generated in a very live way within the room between collaborators. Tobi and I having a shared language around puppetry and dramaturgy which has provided us with a rich foundation from which to work, play, and explore.
Can you tell us what interesting performance elements we might expect to encounter? There’ll definitely be puppets – what about music?
I: The show is really driven by what Tobi and I feel will be the best thing to serve the story we’re currently holding. Puppetry is one form, but there will be moments of song and dance. Both Tobi and I have a history with Gaulier and clowning as a form for discovering subtext and generating performance material. It really feels like a piece of theatre which interweaves our personal journeys and artistic practices into an interdisciplinary work. There has been an invitation to our team to be inquisitive dramaturgs in their roles, as a result we have original songs, moments of evocative sound design which grow into dance breaks, a dream ballet mixed with burlesque, and some spoken text which dances between poetry and monologue.
Can you tell us about the collaboration of the two very distinctive companies, Wattle & Daub and Kakilang? What do they each bring to this production?
T: Wattle and Daub, an ESEA led puppetry and visual theatre company, is known for macabre and music-driven storytelling. Kakilang focuses on interdisciplinary art, amplifying Southeast and East Asian voices across various creative practices.
This collaboration builds on our previous work together, namely the 2021 digital commission Chang and Eng and Me (and Me). Wattle & Daub’s puppetry expertise perfectly complements Kakilang’s cultural vision and commitment to diverse narratives. We were especially excited to commission Tobi’s The Lonesome Death of Eng Bunker, which explores the compelling story after Chang Bunker’s death, which aligns with our mission to present untold stories through groundbreaking art.
You’ve worked as consecutive puppet captains on My Neighbour Totoro which is a massive venture. How does it feel moving into the intimate space of the Omnibus Theatre? The skillset must surely be very different?
T: They are very different shows (there were no singing corpses in Totoro) but from my point of view I don’t think the skill sets are radically different — whether a puppet is a gigantic furry forest creature or a tiny human, the game is always about the interplay between imagination and perception. The wonderful thing about puppetry is that you can tell huge stories in small spaces and create something intimate and delicate in an enormous venue.
I: I have spent my career working across small-scale and commercial theatre so moving between different sized spaces has been an integral part of my journey. For me, the foundational elements of my practice and craft are the same however. Perhaps there are less places to hide in a smaller intimate setting, but ultimately the goal of sharing a story through puppetry as a form still involves the same principles and physical/visual storytelling.
How do you hope that telling this story in this innovative way will affect the audience?
T: Our hope is that audiences leave with some questions (and no answers) about the demands and costs of assimilation into Western cultural contexts, and who pays those costs. Theirs is an immigrant success story, but like so many success stories, it’s built on the suffering of others. Oh, and we want them to leave singing the catchy songs.
Thanks very much to Tobi and Iskander for telling us about this intriguing production.
The Lonesome Death of Eng Bunker plays at the Omnibus Theatre between 17-21 September. Further details and how to book can be found here.
Repertoire:
Tobi Poster-Su is a UK-based theatremaker and scholar who specialises in puppetry and devised, cross disciplinary work. As co-artistic director of Wattle and Daub, Tobi has co-created and performed in Chang and Eng and Me (and Me) (Chinese Arts Now Festival), The Depraved Appetite of Tarrare the Freak (Wilton’s Music Hall) and Triptych (Mayfest).
They have worked as a puppetry director and puppeteer on shows including Tom Morris’s A Christmas Carol (Bristol Old Vic) and Heidi: A Goat’s Tale (the egg) and RSC and Improbable’s My Neighbour Totoro (the Barbican).
Tobi leads the MA in Puppetry at Wimbledon College of Arts and is completing an AHRC-funded PhD (Towards a Critical Puppetry: Racialisation and Material Performance in the Twenty-First Century) at Queen Mary University of London. He is co-convener of the TaPRA Bodies and Performance working group.
Iskandar Sharazuddin is an award-winning British-Bruneian theatre artist, playwright-dramaturg, and movement director. He is an Associate at Headlong Theatre Co. and the Joint Artistic Director of Ellandar Productions, a British East and Southeast Asian theatre company focused on new writing and physical dramaturgies.
Selected directing credits include: harmony. 天人合一 (York Theatre Royal), i must go in, the fog is rising (Arcola Theatre), Turandot (Grimeborn Opera Festival – Nominated Best Opera Production & Winner Best Opera Performance, Off West End Awards), Suggestions of Love(King’s Head Theatre), Two’s Company (Soho Theatre). He is the Resident Director & Puppetry Captain of My Neighbour Totoro (RSC / Barbican / West End) and the former Resident & Dance Captain on How To Train Your Dragon: Live (DreamWorks SKG / Global Creatures).
As a movement / puppetry director: King Troll (New Diorama Theatre), The Real Ones (Bush Theatre), The Bleeding Tree (Southwark Playhouse – Nominated Best Movement/Choreography & Ensemble, Off West End Awards), Liberation Squares (Nottingham Playhouse / Brixton House / UK Tour, Nominated Best Ensemble, Off West End Awards), The Garden of Words (Park Theatre), Worth (New Earth / Storyhouse Live / Arcola Theatre), A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction (Headlong / Barbican), Blackout Songs (Nominated Achievement in Affiliate Theatre, Olivier Awards), Satyagraha & Così fan tutte (English National Opera / West End),(un)written • (un)heard (Fringe World Festival Western Australia, Winner: International Dance & Physical Theatre Award). Associate movement director on The Climbers (Theatre By The Lake).
