National Culture Day
Mar 3rd, 2006 by Jinja
National Culture Day
‘National Culture Day’ will take place at 5:30 at the Veal Men, bordering the Royal Palace, in Phnom Penh. I don’t have a program but I believe there will be a number of traditional performances including shadow puppets. I’ll try to take a picture or two.
Update:
Sbaek Thom (‘Skin big’ – large leather shadow puppets, Cambodian Ramayana) with the action summarized in English. Interesting attempt! I’ve always wanted to see some translation accompanying shadow puppets. Non-Khmer speaking audiences start to nod off after the first hour.
Sbaek thom has been given a UNESCO classification as being significant for national heritage. (Translation from bureaucrat-ese: no money, but they have a stamp of international recognition that troupes can shop round to arts funders.)
For the small shadow puppets, (sbaek touch) much is improvised which makes subtitles/translation nearly impossible. But for large shadow puppets the story is set, it’s quite feasible. I’ve got to inquire about which troupe was doing this. Cool!
Tags: Cambodia
today?
dang it, john, i need to know these kinda things. did we miss it?!?!? we should create a listserv or something about these art events. i always find out when its over! oy komsot nass. -P-