La MaMa Kids: Folktales of Asia and Africa

While she is making bread, the hostess discovers that she has guests. As they all wait for the dough to rise, she tells them three stories using kitchen utensils to play the characters, in the style of found object puppetry. Audiences love to see egg beaters hop into cloth napkins to become Japanese sisters dressed in kimonos, or watch as a flour sifter becomes an old man, with a cookie cutter for a pet rabbit. Among the many notable characters are wooden salt and pepper shakers as sisters in “The Dragon With Five Heads” from Zimbabwe, four steak knives that become the wise man in the Japanese tale “The Lantern and the Fan,” and an unusual doughnut maker becomes the moon goddess disguised as an old women in “The Old Man and the Moon” from Myanmar.