A new bunch runs this old Yilan granary

Take the photograph on the colony's website: among wooden crates and bookshelves stand a redhead in blue, a little brat with his hands on his hips, and a smaller girl. But what is that enormous red-nosed, wide-eyed tree doing behind them, stealing the shot? You don't win just by being bigger.

If your friends still think puppetry is a trick for keeping children quiet for an hour, put this photograph right in their faces. Puppet & Its Double Theater has turned an old granary near Lize Old Street in Wujie, Yilan, into Lize Puppet Art Colony: a place where objects grow bodies and acquire movement. Collection rooms, puppet-making and woodworking workshops, rehearsal rooms and performance spaces are all here. Through residencies and workshops, artists get together to wrestle with something bloody difficult: making inert stuff seem to have a soul, even something to say.

Want to make the pilgrimage? Hold on. This isn't a tourist factory you can pop into because you drove past and needed the toilet.

Regular visits are for booked groups, and you need ten people. They take just one group a day, with no joining another party—a small mercy for the socially anxious—and strongly recommend arranging it at least two weeks ahead. The basic hour costs NT$350 per person: collection and working spaces, plus a chance to operate puppets. Add a making session for a two-hour visit at NT$600. Start times are strictly 10:00 or 14:00. This calls for a theatre group, an art class, or friends lucky enough to have one magnificently bossy organiser.

Artists with strange ideas rattling around their heads can apply for the 2027 residency now. The deadline is October 14, 2026, at 23:59 Taiwan time. Read that carefully: it's the application deadline, not the day you're supposed to move in. Different disciplines are welcome; even an idea that's still a lump of half-formed sludge can have a go.

Find it at 37 Lize East Road, Wujie, Yilan. A taxi from Luodong station covers the 5.6 kilometres in about thirteen minutes. Arrange your visit first. Don't make a wasted journey and then take it out on them with a one-star Google review.

Image: Lize Puppet Art Colony / Puppet & Its Double Theater. Visit booking and the current residency call are linked below.