War, murder, slapstick, private parts and laughter feature in the Ark's interactive display of puppetry, writes Rosita Boland.

There are several dozen new inhabitants of the Ark, Dublin's cultural centre for children, and they will be there until the middle of next month. These first-time visitors to Ireland are puppets, representing countries where puppetry has been a tradition for centuries, including Burma, Vietnam, Indonesia, China, Russia and the Czech Republic. They are the core of a major interactive exhibition called Living Doll.

All five floors of the Ark have been taken over for the show, which has been a year in the planning. It is curated by John McCormick, former head of drama at Trinity College, Dublin and author of several books on puppets. "My job was to look for museums where we could borrow puppets, to make the exhibition as representative as possible," he says.

The three main museums with international collections from which the Ark has items on loan are the State Academic Puppet Theatre of S. V. Obraztsov in Moscow, the International Marionette Museum in Stockholm and the Children's Museum in Chrudim, in the Czech Republic.

While interesting to look at as displays, puppets are best seen in use. Hence the splicing of five short live shows into the exhibition, each of which illustrates a type of puppetry. In fact, while described as an exhibition, Living Doll is more accurately a show, with two performances a day. That means you can't wander in off the street to see it.

In the 20th century, Czechoslovakia was one of the leading forces behind modern puppetry, and in the 1960s it developed the form known as Black Theatre. This is the first show the audience sees, after being led down into the dark basement. Fluorescent-lit puppets, apparently floating in space, appear and disappear, worked by puppeteers dressed in black. The effect is slightly eerie and cinematic. All the images are symbols of the countries represented in Living Doll, such as an Indian snake charmer, a gondolier with two amorous passengers and an energetic Russian dancer.

"The Czech Republic and Russia invented modern puppetry," says Ronan Tully, one of the show's guides, who does a fine job of explaining the social and political context of puppetry, which might pass over the heads of some children. "Sometimes, if there was a bad government, the people couldn't complain about them right out, but they could tell stories about the bad government through puppet shows."

Among the highlights are the pupi, Sicilian puppets that were popular in Italy from the late 1860s until the 1950s. "There was a different episode on show every night. It was like going to watch a soap, except you knew what the storyline was," says McCormick. The main characters are knights and saracens from the Charlemagne era; battle scenes were a key part of every performance. The rod-operated puppets, which have real metal armour, shields and swords, are so heavy that the puppeteers must wear slings to help support the weight.

A well-aimed thrust of a sword to some of the pupi hits a hidden spring, resulting in their literally being undone from the nave to the chaps. Sadly, you don't get to see this at the Ark, as the pupi are for display rather than performance. You do see the spectacular result, however, with one male puppet lying neatly split down the middle.

You also witness murder being committed by one of Europe's best-known puppets, the glove-operated Mr Punch. The English comic character has an equivalent in every country where puppetry is performed: Kasperl in Germany, Petrushka in Russia and Vasilake in Romania - where, for some reason, his head is always made of a jug.

"This story is about 200 years old," says Tully before the show starts in a little Punch and Judy theatre. "People would come and set up their stalls at fairs or wherever there were big crowds. Mr Punch kills his baby and wife and the policeman with a big stick - and he even kills the devil, too."

Judging by the howls of laughter that greet the performance, subversion of authority is as popular as ever. Tully also explains the origin of the word "slapstick": Punch's original paddle-like stick made a slapping sound, hence the association with crude comedy.

There is also an extract from the ever-popular Czech Don Giovanni, performed with marionettes - a puppet always operated from above with strings. In the introduction, Don Giovanni is described as a man who likes to kiss women a lot - "and if he's feeling really hot, he'll pinch their bottoms, too."

Asian shadow puppets are among the oldest in the genre. Like the biblical images on Irish high crosses, their primary purpose was to illustrate religious stories, such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata, for a largely illiterate audience. Made of scraped leather, the puppets are sometimes painted, sometimes undecorated but always intricately cut.

On display at the Ark are some simple two-dimensional Turkish puppets, which were used in coffee houses as a popular way of telling the news in a time before mass media. Also on display are some beautiful, meticulously detailed Indonesian shadow puppets. The performance here, behind a shadow-box screen, is a sample of a story from Java. In Indonesia, shadow-puppet shows regularly start outdoors at dusk, lasting for up to seven hours.

Not every country represented or type of puppetry can be illustrated by an accompanying performance. A single wooden puppet stands in for Vietnam's unique form of water puppetry. Originally inspired by the shadows of workers falling on the water in the rice paddies, and now performed in thigh-deep specially-created ponds, Vietnamese water shows are always accompanied by live traditional music and often feature fireworks.

Live music also always accompanies Burmese marionette shows, which have seven basic characters, some of which are on show at the Ark. The art had almost died out but is now enjoying a revival, particularly in Mandalay. Some marionettes have up to 60 strings apiece, including one for each eyebrow, and thus great skill is required to operate them. As a result, some Burmese marionette puppeteers are so famous the curtain always pulls up at some stage of the performance to reveal their faces.

The standard characters in Burmese puppetry include a white horse that represents chaos, a prince and princess, an alchemist, an astrologist and an ogre. One of their special features is that male puppets have sexual organs.

This is where the Ark's policy of asking visitors not to touch the exhibits really tests the restraint of both curious children and adults.

The show ends with an opportunity to experiment with some of the puppets seen in performance. The top floor of the Ark has been transformed into a succession of little stages, where the puppeteers show children how to work simple stringed, glove and shadow puppets. It is a wildly popular interactive end to a charming and informative exhibition.

Living Doll runs at the Ark, Dublin, until June 15th. There is public and family access at weekends only. More information from 01-6707788