March of the

Ma Toe Toe was in her twenties when a senior male puppeteer and close friend first taught her the art form that would eventually become her profession.

“I was introduced to puppetry in 1998, and I soon got hooked,” recalled the puppeteer who now manipulates the strings nightly at the Mandalay Marionettes Theater and whose sister is a harpist with the group.

Traditional puppetry was once performed as entertainment for Myanmar’s royalty and on street stages during carnivals and events, including Buddhist full moon days.

The shows thought to date back to the late 1700s were also popular among rural populations, and performances often lasted an entire night.

Under the previous military junta, Myanmar’s marionette operas became a dying art and were only performed for a handful of foreign tourists. For some years, Ma Toe Toe worked primarily entertaining