The heads of the puppets are usually movable so that the costuming of the characters can be changed according to the needs of the play. The faces of the painted-face characters and the clowns are done so that their reflections carefully imitate the colourful facial make-up of the opera actors. Thus the faces of beautiful ladies and handsome scholars are usually cut so that only a narrow outline of the face is left from the leather to reflect the shape of their faces on the screen. They follow the conventions of opera make-up. The execution of the puppet’s faces (which are usually shown in profile) is normally most delicate. Their reflections on the screen are colourful and their finer details are chiselled in the leather as a kind of filigree ornamentation. Thus the puppets can imitate human movements when they are operated with rods behind a paper or muslin screen. Their legs, waists, shoulders and elbows can be bent, and their arms are constructed from two parts. They are cut from leather that is treated and coloured so that they became transparent. In their costuming and gestures the delicate shadow puppets of the eastern school imitate actual kunqu actors.Ĭhinese shadow puppets vary in size from some 20 cm to one meter. The western, now completely vanished, style employed large archaic puppets, while the eastern school absorbed elements from live opera, particularly from the southern Kun Opera. The style of Peking shadow theatre, for example, developed into two major styles. Many regional variants of shadow theatre evolved during the centuries. During that time, it is known that the shadow puppeteers formed their own guild. Textual evidence of the shadow theatre is available from the Song Dynasty (960–1279). On the other hand, it may be possible that shadow theatre in China was born during the Tang Dynasty (618–907), when the Buddhist monks and missionaries visualised their didactic storytelling with shadow puppets. A legend from the 1 st century BC tells about an emperor who has lost his beloved and how a shaman brings her back to the emperor in the form of a shadow. The history of shadow theatre in China may indeed be very long. Several forms of shadow and puppet theatre have flourished in China during the centuries. In Gansu province, it is accompanied by Daoqing music, while in Jilin, accompanying Huanglong music forms some of the basis of modern opera.A brave warrior, Chinese shadow theatre. Today, puppets made of leather and moved on sticks are used to tell dramatic versions of traditional fairy tales and myths. The storytellers generally used the art to tell events between various war kingdoms or stories of Buddhist sources. The earliest shadow theatre screens were made of mulberry paper. Later, it was introduced to other Southeastern Asian countries. It was spread by the conquering Mongols to distant countries like Persia, Arabia, and Turkey. ![]() In the 13th century, the shadow show became a regular recreation in the barracks of the Mongolian troops. During the Ming Dynasty there were 40 to 50 shadow show troupes in the city of Beijing alone. Shadow theatre became quite popular as early as the Song Dynasty when holidays were marked by the presentation of many shadow plays. Using an oil lamp they made her shadow move, bringing her back to life. ![]() Her joints were animated using 11 separate pieces of the leather, and adorned with painted clothes. The officers made a shape of the concubine using donkey leather. The emperor was devastated, and he summoned his court officers to bring his beloved back to life. Shadow puppetry originated during the Han Dynasty when one of the concubines of Emperor Wu of Han died from an illness. At present, more than 20 countries are known to have shadow show troupes. Shadow play (Chinese: ?, pí ying xì) or shadow puppetry is an ancient form of storytelling and entertainment using opaque, often articulated figures in front of an illuminated backdrop to create the illusion of moving images.
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