Paper Hearts: The Puppet Show

HAD Project – January 23rd and 24th 2010

Opening Performances

For the opening weekend of the HAD project in Sheung Wan, Hong Kong, Hoi Chiu and Maggie Blue O'Hara, Co-Artistic Directors of All Theatre Art Association, will create an original puppet show called Paper Hearts. Following these performances, an exhibition of Paper Hearts: The Puppet Show will be available for the public to view over the entire period of the HAD Jan. 23- March 2010.

Paper Hearts Puppet Show Synopsis
Paper Hearts is a touching story about a local (Hong Kong) Chinese woman in her sixties, who has been a paper collector all of her life. She lives simply in a small, run-down apartment on the corner of Staunton and Aberdeen Road. On one of her typical days flattening cardboard boxes and pushing her paper cart up the steep hills of Sheung Wan, she finds an abandoned baby in the garbage.
She takes the baby home and becomes his mother.
Paper Hearts takes the audience on a journey, observing the lonely woman who now has a young child to care for. They have many lovely times together: eating fresh warm egg tarts, lighting incense and burning paper during Yulan. She shows him how to cut paper hearts with scissors; he helps her collect paper on her route.
But the boy grows up quickly and is soon embarrassed by his mother's way of life. He becomes a highly paid architect and tries to force his mother to quit her paper collecting. He doesn't appreciate how hard she has worked her whole life and how much she has helped him become the man he is today.

One day, while working at his office with many overdue projects on his desk, he ignores a phone call from his mother. When he finally visits her she is in the hospital. Later they have one final dreamy day together at the old park where she used to take him. All around them is construction and new buildings going up; the city is noisy and distracting. Yet she makes another row of paper hearts with her scissors and gives it to him.  Time slows down and the noise dissolves. He remembers when he was a child and how she would push him on the swings and how that simple action made them both so happy. He finally thanks his mother for everything she has done for him. They hold hands and walk home.




Director's Notes
Paper Hearts is a metaphor for the conflict between old and new Hong Kong, which sees progress in tearing down the old and building the new. Paper Hearts is about how Hong Kong culture is precious – how the memories, architecture, old streets and old people have so many stories to share, with wisdom and knowledge, from which we can learn. 
In the end, Paper Hearts is about appreciating the past, learning to understand each other and trying to work together in harmony. Every element of the show will be made out of paper and wood. Paper comes from trees, an invaluable part of nature only recently being viewed as important again as they become endangered. Paper holds knowledge, memories and personal stories we need to remember in order to appreciate where we've come from and therefore have faith in the path of our future.