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This collection of Chinese shadow plays contains seven selected traditional shadow plays from the Qing and early Republican periods from Shaanxi and Shanxi. A minor operatic genre, the Chinese shadow theatre provides one of the best avenues for examining the mentality and sense of humor of the silent masses. Although Shaanxi sports the largest number of shadow traditions in China and is where the art form is most vibrant, its shadow plays have never before been published in either Chinese or English. Translated from rare hand-copied play scripts, this volume includes the most literary and refined plays of the genre as well as coarser popular plays and farcical Post-midnight skits. It also features a survey of the state of the shadow theatre in contemporary China, extensive critical introductions and bibliography.
In her study of Chinese shadow theatre Fan-Pen Li Chen documents and corrects misconceptions about this once-popular art form. She argues how a traditional folk theatre reflected and subverted Chinese popular culture.
Kansas-born Pauline Benton (1898-1974) was encouraged by her father, one of America's earliest feminist male educators, to reach for the stars. Instead, she reached for shadows. In 1920s Beijing, she discovered shadow theatre (piyingxi), a performance art where translucent painted puppets are manipulated by highly trained masters to cast coloured shadows against an illuminated screen. Finding that this thousand-year-old forerunner of motion pictures was declining in China, Benton believed she could save the tradition by taking it to America. Mastering the male-dominated art form in China, Benton enchanted audiences eager for the exotic in Depression-era America. Her touring company, Red Gate Shadow Theatre, was lauded by theatre and art critics and even performed at Franklin Roosevelt's White House. Grant Hayter-Menzies traces Benton's performance history and her efforts to preserve shadow theatre as a global cultural treasure by drawing on her unpublished writings, the recollections of her colleagues, the testimonies of shadow masters who survived China's Cultural Revolution, as well as young innovators who have carried on Benton's pioneering work.
This handbook aims at a history of Arabic shadow theatre from the earliest sightings in the tenth century to the turn of the twentieth century. At the core is an analytical documentation of all the known textual remnants and the preserved artifacts of this rich and still living tradition.
Puppeteers have enthralled audiences for millennia with their unique charm, not just telling stories but enacting history, sharing knowledge, and preserving culture. In this dazzling and immersive volume based on the 2019 exhibition Shadows, Strings and Other Things (UBC Museum of Anthropology), puppets from all corners of the globe are resplendent in striking photographs that illustrate texts from ten scholars and puppeteers. Bodies of Enchantment highlights still-vital traditional puppetry practices, as well as examples of modern adaptations of the form: translucent leather shadow puppets depict ancient Indian epics in modern-day Indonesia; Taiwan's long-running Pili glove puppetry show thrives in the digital era; and Indigenous filmmaker Amanda Strong uses stop-motion animation to create entrancing new realms. Bodies of Enchantment: Puppets from Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas features over 150 full-color images, and chapters by nine additional contributors: Anthony Alan Shelton revels at the alluring uncanniness of puppets; Annie Katsura Rollins explores Chinese shadow puppetry; Sutrisno Setya Hartana introduces us to Indonesian wayang; Jo Ann Cavallo unpacks the archetypes of Sicilian opera dei pupi; Mary Jo Arnoldi encounters the Sogobò masquerade in Malí; Izabela Brochado shows the continued vibrancy of mamulengo in Brazil; Kathy Foley and Catherine Ries uncover the significance of clothing in Javanese wayang golak cepak; and Jill Baird shares the history of puppetry at the Museum of Anthropology.