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Jean-Luc Penso, the first French disciple of Taiwan’s national treasure puppeteer Tian-Lu Li, displayed his precious collections in the exhibition “Li Tien-Lu & Jean-Luc Penso: A Wondrous Taiwanese-Franco Rendezvous” at National Central University Art Center in November, 2015. His collections included western-faced puppets in his adapted Occidental legend l'Odyssée, performance posters, and photos taken in his days of learning puppetry. In his childhood, Jean-Luc Penso was impressed with the Chinese and Indian portraits that his grand grandfather brought home from far East and thus harbored a yearning for the Oriental. In his teens, Mr. Penso came to Taiwan through mainland China by coincidence, met Master puppeteer Tian-Lu Li, and decided to learn puppetry from Master Li with his great enthusiasm. With Master Li’s encouragement, he founded Théâtre du Petit Miroir with the other two French disciples Catherine Larue and Claire Illouz in France in 1978. Master Li once said to Mr. Penso: “I believe there are many legends in your hometown Europe. You should work on creating puppet plays in your culture rather than merely being proud of playing Taiwanese puppetry.” Thanks to Master Li’s words, Jean-Luc Penso created his puppet play l'Odyssée, an adaptation from Greek epic poem Odyssey, and designed a collection of puppets, stage set, and incidental music for the play. The puppet play l'Odyssée made its global debut in Greece, bringing a new life and energy for Oriental puppetry. Besides traditional glove puppets, Théâtre du Petit Miroir also plays shadow puppets to tell the myths and legends around the world. They have traveled to more than 80 countries around the globe.
