Robin Ruizendaal was the director of the Taiyuan Asian Puppet Theatre Museum in Taipei from 2000 to 2020, with a collection of over 10.000 Asian theatre puppets and related artifacts. He is currently working on the Asian theatre puppet research project of the Paul Lin collection at the Taiwan Museum and is artistic director of the Taiyang Theatre Company. He holds a Ph.D. in sinology from Leiden University in the Netherlands (Marionette Theatre in Quanzhou, Brill publishers, 2006). He has published widely on Asian puppet theatre (Asian Theatre Puppets, Thames & Hudson, 2009 etc.) and was curator numerous (puppet) theatre related exhibitions around the world. He has written and directed more than 20 modern and traditional Taiwanese (puppet) music theatre productions, that have been performed in over 50 countries around the world. He is an honorary citizen of the city of Taipei and recipient of the Prix franco-taiwanais in 2019 for the promotion of Taiwanese puppet theatre around the world.
From the museum stage to the living stage: tracing a 100-year family puppet tradition from Lübeck back to Taiwan
The origins of a unique glove puppet stage in the KOLK17 collection were rather mysterious. Through archival and online research Robin Ruizendaal made a journey from the past to the present. Finding the descendants of the former owner of the stage and discovering that they were still continuing the family tradition in a new and modern form.
