Hears & Boots

Hearts and Boots is a puppet theatre performance that tells the story of Mago, a goddess from Korean creation mythology. Using elaborate miniature sets, the show features Bratz dolls as puppets, blending familiar pop culture icons with traditional storytelling. Mago, a giant goddess who created the Korean peninsula through her bodily waste—urine and feces—and later wove hemp fabric to ascend to the spiritual realm, is reimagined here with a crude, earthy personality and an enormous presence. The puppeteers, Jaewoo and Rhyan are integrated into the miniature world of Bratz as they sing and move with the dolls. Their body is juxtaposed with the scale of the doll theatre and Bratz dolls, contributing to the playful and subversive atmosphere, highlighting themes of bodily sovereignty, creation, and the intersections of the sacred and the profane. By combining children’s storytime with physical comedy, absurdity and sexually explicit images, Hearts and Boots invites the audience into a richly detailed miniature world where myth, queerness, and humor converge. The performance continues my exploration of puppetry and ritual as tools to connect with queer time and ancestral histories in new, provocative ways.