Reach Out and Touch Someone

As I’ve continued to delve into the world of Chinese shadow puppetry, it’s become clearer and clearer to me that the form’s continued obscurity is one of its main obstacles to survival. In North America, when I begin to tell someone what I do, and they’re kind enough not to glaze over in the eyes, I usually get one of a few standard responses: 1) You mean like the Muppets? 2) Like Being John Malkovich? 3) Or, they put up their hands in a complicated tangle of fingers and say ‘like this?’ In China, the problem isn’t that much better. Everyone has heard of shadow puppetry, but very few have ever seen a live performance.

For numerous reasons, China wasn’t a large exporter of their cultural forms throughout the middle part of the 1900s. Even now, though China has ostensibly become increasingly open, the focus remains on economics, the environment and politics, which leaves little room to push the arts as ambassadors. Even if they had, most of their folk arts forms haven’t warranted enough attention to be exported, even when that has been the trend. There has been the odd article here, the occasional post or book there, but for the most part Chinese shadow puppetry still remains out of the general consciousness.

This lack of attention has seemed to stutter my research at times, making me divert my attention away from the work simply to publicize. But, over the years, this has actually helped hone the work, my goals and continues to reinvigorate what the true mission of my research should always be: sharing and engaging. Just when I think I’m tired of hitting the book, writing papers, conducting fieldwork – I am gifted a moment of true sharing and it does wonders to propel me forward.

Just this past spring, I’ve had the great honor to present a lecture/workshop at the Atlanta Center for Puppetry Arts (aka puppet-wonderland) and a demo/workshop at the incredible Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Both experiences, while acting as platforms for me to share Chinese shadow puppetry, were also vehicles towards sharpening my own understanding of how to share the work and what about it is relevant to a diverse North American public.

In Atlanta, the workshop participants were largely made of up adult educators and puppet professionals. The center’s educational outreach has also mastered the webinar format – allowing participants from as far away as Hawaii and Australia to participate as long as they have an internet connection! This was a first for me.

 The webinar audience is supported by a team of folks who video and moderate questions and information.  It’s fabulous if you’re stuck in the boondocks but want to join in puppet workshops.

They all delighted me with deeply considered questions about the history, but more interestingly, they wanted to know about the making process: how was the leather handled, what types of blades are used to cut the hide, what pigment options are out there, what are the joints and rods made out of, etc. This engineering minutia is the aspect of my work that I have shared the least. Hearing their curiosity confirmed that I’m not alone in my interests here.

In Virginia, the museum’s incredible art education and events staff and I developed a new set-up for large groups of festival goers to partake in both/either shadow puppetry or a make-your-own shadow puppet project.  With a family audience of around three thousand people in a matter of a few short hours, we knew we had to make both activities easily accessible and feasible, but also engaging and interactive.  Most successful were the new simplified child-proof Chinese-style shadow puppets I created that are sturdy enough for the rowdiest of kid rebels, yet beautiful enough to warrant enchantment. (A Do-It-Yourself Post will follow in a few weeks.)

A plastic, child-proof Chinese shadow male clown figure, ready for play.

I’ve toyed with plastic before and never loved the results, but these satisfied me. And, most importantly, the kids (and adults) fell in love with them.

 Parents often ‘help’ their kids get acquainted behind the screen, but really end up enjoying it just as much as their half-pints.

I love the natural curiosity to see what’s going on on both sides of the screen, even when you’re the one doing the puppeting.

We had kids who were there so long, I had to request they make room for others only to find them back again after a short pause. At moments in the chaos, I’d look around the mob of children at the screen or studiously making their shadow puppet and felt profoundly encouraged. There was a reason Chinese shadow puppetry survived and thrived for so long, and there is a reason it should continue – it’s just taking a little time to catch up to this crazy modern world. Proof is in the puppet.

Thanks for reading~

History Repeats Itself

This past year has been an incredible mash-up of personal and professional adventures.  I’ve been able to return to China twice (a record for me) and also appreciate home more than ever.  And even though my stays at home leave me longing for the shadow puppet trail, I’ve also been able to do a different kind of searching here in America.

As part of my continued research stateside, I’ve come into contact with a surprising number of amazing scholars, students, enthusiasts and cheerleaders for the work – egging me on and keeping me going.

A few days after I landed back on US soil in December 2011, I was gifted a present in my inbox.  One Grant Hayter-Menzies, a biographer living in the west of Canada, had found me through my blog and asked if we could chat as he was in the midst of finishing a biography about Pauline Benton.  Pauline Benton, hmmm.  My mind ticked back through my dusty Rolodex of names – and – oh Yes.  I knew about her Chinese shadow puppet collection – now housed with the Chinese Theatre Works company in New York – and a few tidbits about her life, but the details were fuzzy.

We started a correspondence, Grant and I, and after an interview, chats via phone and email, I was given the opportunity to read his manuscript before it’s officially published through McGill-Queens University Press.  I can’t tell you what a dream it was to read, both for content and also for its writing.

Pauline Benton was an American Woman from Kansas, born just before the turn of last century.  She fell in love with puppetry in 1923 when she encountered her first shadow puppet performance in the courtyard of her Aunt Emma, who was then teaching in Beijing.   From there, she dedicated her life to become its lone steward in the states – the first female puppet master in the west and a collector, collaborator and creator of shadow puppet shows in her own right.  Her company, The Red Gate Shadow Players, were ambassadors for both the Chinese people and their incredible folk artistry during an ever-changing relationship to the states.

What Grant does so well with all his beautifully researched facts is make it, her and shadow puppetry, come to life.  He places her amazing story within such a rich context that you can’t help but be transported.   He takes you to Beijing in the 1920s, with all its chaos and tumult.  You also get to travel to New York in the early part of the century and around the country as a fledgling Chinese shadow puppet troupe tries to make a name for themselves despite the obvious obstacles.   Between performances at the White House for the Roosevelts and the seedy streets of San Francisco’s Chinatown, you can feel the determination and dedication of Pauline and her troupe mates.

Of all the historical books I’ve read on shadow puppetry, this is the one I will reread over and over again – if not for pleasure, then for encouragement.  To know of a woman doing much the same work nearly 80 years earlier makes me feel comforted, supported.  I’ve got company on the puppet trail.   Somehow, without even knowing much about her, I seemed to have traced much the same path and even drawn many of the same conclusions on my own.  We seem to be kindred spirits, only separated by time.   Now, I simply have to live up to the rest of the trail she blazed for a Shadow Woman.

The story is echoing a theme in my recent musings of the past years of fieldwork, driving home the fact and fear of knowing that the stories we carry die with us if we don’t share them.  Whose responsibility is it to share these?  The teller or the listener?  As I finished the Epilogue, I had a moment of panic followed quickly by gratitude.  I can already tell this story, this work, will continue to impact me for many years to come – and to think it could have so easily remained buried and eventually lost forever but for another story hunter who saw its quiet potential.

This is a book for anyone who recognizes the inherent curse and blessing in a passion you can’t ignore.

I will certainly post the book’s release on the blog!

Thanks for reading~

Shadow Woman, The Extraodinary Career of Pauline Benton by Grant Hayter-Menzies.  Due out in Fall 2013 from McGill-Queens University Press, Montreal.  Press release below.

Visit Grant’s other works here at: http://redroom.com/member/grant-hayter-menzies

Information on the Pauline Benton collection at Chinese Theatre Works: http://www.chinesetheatreworks.org/w/education/images/

It’s A Small World

I first met Joanne Oussoren and Frans Hakkemars of Droomtheater in Hong Kong, where we had gathered for Mingri Theatre Company’s Puppetry in Education conference.  There, even amongst a crowd of other puppeteers, we repeatedly found ourselves in conversations.  Perhaps it was because of their similar interests in puppetry as a vehicle for passing on cultural inheritance or our shared love of ancient forms of theatre.  Most likely, I suspect is was simply their open and inquisitive nature that drew me to them.

As community artists working often in their own neighborhoods in and around the burgeoning working-class metropolis of Rotterdam, Holland, they saw added complexity to the questions we were asking about traditions, inheritance and heritage as their immigrant population continues to swell.  We went our separate ways after just a few days, looking for future ways to put our questions into practice.

Fast-forward to November 2012 and I find myself across from Joanne and Frans at the breakfast table in Holland.  We’re still heavy in conversation, but this time over toast with chocolate sprinkles and an impressive array of cheeses.  Our dream of a collaboration was made real with generous funding from both private and public Netherlands entities and we’re anxious to get started.

Joanne and Frans have envisioned a program to fully involve the children of Feijnoord (a small township in the city of Rotterdam) in a cultural story important to Holland: Sinterklaas and his carnival of animals.   I’m here to guide the creation of this story within a simplified Chinese shadow style, accessible for ages 5-14.   The children begin with shadow puppet design and creation, then rehearsal and finally a performance for the community.  By letting the children become apart of every step of the process, we believe that this will deepen the embodiment of the story and enrich the learning experience.

Of all the iterations of our workshops, the most exciting was working in Feijnoord’s private afterschool program with children ages 6-12.  The township of Feijnoord is a historically popular place for new immigrants with its low rent and convenient proximity to the city center.  Currently, 80% of the township’s population is non-Dutch, with most of the immigrants coming in from Turkey and Morocco.

The afterschool program is a rare hold over from decades past – their building awkwardly stuck right in between rows of traditional Dutch apartments.

As the clock strikes three, dozens of kids speaking a myriad of languages stream into the waiting activities of the able-bodied volunteers.  This time, we’ve got shadow puppets for them.

And while these puppets may not look anything like the puppets I’ve been researching for 4 years, they are inherently Chinese in design and engineering.  We’ve developed a simplified method of using permanent markers on clear plastic so that kids don’t have to spend five years mastering leather cutting before they can make a great shadow puppet.  The control rods and joint methods are all faithfully Chinese.  I wonder if all this newness will derail their energy – it doesn’t.  They don’t even hesitate – there is an appetite here.  They dive in, mistakes and all and create some of the most alive puppets I’ve seen yet.

I’ve often been ‘warned’ about the ‘chaotic nature’ of such groups but I never find it to be thus.  Yes, they’re awfully loud and yes, it’s hard to keep them on track sometimes, yes.  But, truly, it’s only kids being kids in the best way possible – fully.  I’m much more disconcerted when I see children so well behaved that they’re afraid to color outside of the lines.   This paralytic fear of wrongness and failure are a much more serious problem.

I could go on and on here about the necessity of arts in a child’s development and how tests and data prove that the arts help children excel in all other fields but I won’t.  I’m just going to say that at its most fundamental level, the arts erase the right/wrong binary and encourage the infinite possibilities of everything.  I strongly believe that in the near future we’re going to need more creative and empathic thinkers than good chart readers.

After just an hour and a half of managing the chaos, the kids funnel out as fast as they funneled in and for a moment we are left in the loud silence.  I am exhausted but smiling.  It’s clear that these kids, with their unflinching ability to move forward – mistakes and all – are ready for anything.   And now, they have shadow puppetry in their arsenal.

Joanne and Frans and I pack up, talk to the volunteers and smush into the van once more.  We head home for a supper of fresh Marrakech sausages from the nearby Moroccan butcher and some typical Dutch mashed potatoes and greens.  Over the fading daylight, we crowd closer and closer to the warm table lamps – preparing the next workshop’s materials and jotting down our thoughts.

They’ll continue rehearsing after I’m gone and prepare for a final performance by the kids, for the community.  The project comes full circle this way.  The shadow puppet revolution is closer than ever.

After a week or so of this routine, we catch ourselves – it seems as though I’ve been here all along, we’ve been friends all along, we’ve been doing this all along.  Weirder still is that this is a reoccurring feeling I get when connecting with fellow puppeteers around the globe.  As the web gets larger, the feeling gets more intimate.   I can’t wait to get back.

Thanks for reading~

Chinese Shadow Puppet-con

Never before have I thought about how wonderful it would be to go to something like Comic-con: a bunch of people, passionate about the same thing, there for the sole purpose of sharing and geeking-out.  Of course I had never considered the awesomeness of a thing like that because I never thought it possible that I would ever get to experience my own Chinese Shadow Puppet-con.

But I did, everyone!  It occurred and I was there!

The Ballard Institute of Puppetry and the University of Connecticut Puppetry program hosted a number of scholars, puppeteers and artmakers and enthusiasts to join in the conversation at the first ever North American Chinese Shadow Puppet Symposium, run in tandem with their Pauline Benton Chinese Shadow Figures exhibition running until December 16^th. (PS: I’ll be blogging more on the awesomeness of Pauline Benton soon!)

I expected to be inspired by the talks that were given and inspired to give one myself on my recent fieldwork, but I was surprised by just how invigorating it was to be in the same room with these people.  Usually, we research, read and synthesize in isolation.  To bring these thoughts, feelings and concerns forth to a knowledgeable and equally passionate public was nothing less than finally feeling seen and heard.  No, you’re not crazy for dedicating so much time and energy to this, and Yes, it’s as fascinating and never-ending as you’ve been suspecting.

John Bell was such a warm host along with the rest of the BIMP staff; Fan Pen Chen gave us an amazing run-down of her current research of snake cults and the legend of Lady White Snake and its evolution as a common shadow puppet story; Mary E Hirsch mesmerized us with her incredibly astute work in correcting mis-identified Chinese shadow puppets in American collections; Stephen Kaplin and Kuang-Yu Fong gave us both a great tour of their co-curated exhibition and a sneak peak at their first attempt at a one man digital shadow puppet show (which was wholly engaging); Bradford Clark told us about his recent trips to China to experience puppetry; and many other short presentations rounded out the event.

I laughed, I cried, it was much better than Cats.

Next time, I hope you will join us.

Thanks for reading~

Pauline Benton holding up one of her figures.

Stephen Kaplin giving us a personalized tour of the exhibition

Some of Red Gate Players’ beautiful show programs

Pauline commissioned some ‘newer’ puppets that would reflect the Beijing she saw at the time, in the 1930s, which included cars!

The whole crew at Chinese Shadow Puppet-con!

There’s Nothing To Tell (没有什么可说）

There’s Nothing To Tell (没有什么可说）

My first full-length shadow play based on my Fulbright fieldwork, premiered at In The Heart of the Beast Theatre, June 2012

So what does one do with all this research?  Over a year of fieldwork and what do I have to show for it?  When I returned to the states in late 2011 and began explaining my absence, most people’s initial question was ‘where can I read more about your work?’  This question of writing about the work is entirely gracious – how nice is everyone to want to know more about Chinese shadow puppetry? – but it is also a default that I’m learning to resist.

Our Western academic approach to non-western traditional performance research often leaves practice-led researchers (researching by way of the practice, not – say – with literary review) in the lurch. The written practice has long been used to validate non-verbal creative forms to varying degrees of success.  For those of us who’s practice is actually about the non-verbal aspects of craft and cultural transmission, doubly difficult.  To write about a living, breathing, tradition such as Chinese shadow puppetry and its craft is like, well, like trying to sum up the whole of your parts in an online profile, perhaps.  It is wholly, embarrassingly inadequate.

So, what does a practitioner-researcher show for all that work?  Those months of learning to scrape cowhide, sharpen knives, study design aesthetics and symbolism, cutting and painting leather, gathering oral history accounts, encountering a traditional form older than I can fathom and meeting masters on the other side of the world – where does this ten months of fieldwork go?  If not in a paper, then where?

Practice-led researchers have explained that one of the key elements distinguishing them from other more traditionally accepted research methodologies (quantitative, qualitative) is that the output resemble the form in which you research.  It is assumed that less is lost in translation and the output is poised to reach a greater audience.  As practice-led research is a relatively new field, some are skeptical.  I am not.

Before I left, I had the prescience to apply for funding – knowing that if I waited until I got back and had to start from scratch on a new project, my experience would be too distant to utilize in a creative process (not to mention my momentum stalled).  The grants came through towards the beginning of my Fulbright year, so I carried this question with me throughout: where does the work go?

Early on in the year, after meeting just a few of the last remaining practitioners, I knew it would be a story about them.  The passion, the tenacity, the obstacles, the stories – each of their biographies full of twists and turns about why they started and how they made it – were inspirational, to say the least.  I combined elements of all their biographies into one fictional account of a grandfather’s journey as a shadow puppeteer in 1930s China and into the modern era.  These stories felt like better insight into the incredible legacy Chinese shadow puppetry has garnered along the way than a straight adaptation of a shadow play would have been.

So, with notes overflowing, thoughts in a tangle and heart-achey from leaving one of the best adventures of my life, I returned home and began working on a new full-length piece for the shadow theatre.

In short, the process was painful, rewarding, revelatory and cathartic.  I absolutely would not have made it without such brilliant, patient and hilarious collaborators who indeed knew when it was time to stop banging our heads against a wall and have a dance break.  The learning was heavy and fast and has already cycled back around to inform my research again.

The research and this process resulted in a show I’ve never been more proud or more emotionally attached to in all my 20 years of theatre making (I’m older than I look).  And now I can confidentially say, this is what I do with my research.

We are in plans to put it up for a full run in March of this coming year in the Twin Cities area.  We hope you will join us!

Thanks for reading~

Collaborators: Stephanie Watson, Dan Dukich, Rebekah Rentzel, Shawny Sena, Derek Lee Miller

Here are some pictures of the show to give you a better sense of the show’s welcoming, beauty and scope.

The incredible In The Heart of the Beast Theatre.  Go Minneapolis puppet theatre!

The initial seating.  The show is presented in traditional Chinese style – in that – you can move around as you please and the show is a show from any angle.  Choose-your-own-shadow-puppet-adventure.

Main screen with permanent headers.

Full view of main screens and smaller present-day Grandpa on the smaller side screen.  You’ll notice the difference in shadow worlds: scale, color, style.

Come on!  There has to be a scene at Chinese Spring Festival!  Notice the Tanghulu snacks on the bottom left of the screen?

Grandpa meets his match as a young man apprenticing a shadow master.

The pair are able to talk more candidly when they talk through their puppets.

A view of my handcut leather puppets from backstage.

View from backstage through to the audience.  

My favorite part: the gathering after the show.  Audience members are encouraged to stay, talk, keep sampling Chinese teas, play with the puppets and ask their questions.  

Luanxian or Bust

As my final farewell to this spring’s China trip, I decided to call on my best shadow puppet friend, Tianxiang.  You may remember him as the dedicated son of a puppet cutting master in Northeastern Hebei province, I remember him as the exception to the rule.  He greeted me at the small bus stop in Tangshan with the same buoyancy I have come to expect.

As we caught up with hugs and giggles, we were picked up by a stranger in a fancy car instead of hopping on the usual city bus to head to Tianxiang’s home in the near countryside.  I asked him what was up.

“Well,” he said, “I’ve told the good people of Luanxian that you’ve come for a visit and they’d like to meet you”.   And away we went, speeding down a spankin’ new freeway in a fancy car to the neighboring county.  As usual, I had no idea what to expect.

We arrived to a small mob of expectant greeters, the first of which was the benevolent Mrs. Guo, a local journalist who has dedicated much of her spare time and energy into promoting Luanxian’s exquisite heritage of shadow puppetry.  Behind her was her jolly husband, a task force of other supporters and a whole bunch of random add-ons probably hoping to partake in the inevitable welcome banquet.  I had expected a quiet two-day trip with my friend and was dressed for that in my fieldwork shorts, recently repaired Keen shoes and a plain pink t-shirt.  It was an embarrassing way to introduce myself to such a crowd, so I compensated with graciousness.

We chatted the lunch away and planned the day’s activities.  Would I like a tour of their city?  Of course.  How about a trip to the site of the upcoming shadow puppet museum?  You bet.  Would I like to see a troupe perform?  Nothing would make me happier.

And we spent the day much like that.  The mob of us trolling from location to location in a caravan of small minivans checking out the newest and oldest sites in town.  I can’t tell you how many times I said ‘fantastic’.   I’m sure they were suspect of my honesty by noon.

But, the shadow puppet troupe really was fantastic.

A bumpy ride out to the countryside and we were met with the familiar clang of the Chinese cymbal and Erhu screeching away.  We ducked under the front door into a small courtyard and there was the shadow screen set up and ready to go.

As it was daytime and the screen was designed for electric lights only, I watched the entirety of the performance from the back – which is where I prefer to be anyways.  What a colorful cavalcade unfolded before us.  These puppets looked just like the ones Tianxiang and his father so lovingly cut but they were dancing, fighting, alive.  The pliable, thin leather makes for stunning feats of performance.

The Luanxian tradition is famous for its skilled puppeteers and its rare tradition of singing from script. Most of the troupes I’ve worked with have a few scripts for reference, but heavily rely on a mix of memory and improvisation for the final performance.  The rest of the scripts I’ve seen are usually behind glass in a museum somewhere.

As I marveled at the beautiful hand scripted librettos, more were brought out and placed on a table in front of the screen.  Putting a script in hand and flipping gently through the pages, I felt in the presence of something much older than myself.  The feeling is akin to the sense I get when I see the old puppets performed with – that heartache I feel for a past I was never apart of is eased for the moment and I feel my place on the long continuum of human existence.

But as good as the troupe is, like most of the others still surviving around the country, they are supported entirely (and not with much) by the local government.  It’s no longer a full time job, but a hobby.  They perform anytime they are called upon by Mrs. Guo and her cohorts to entertain visitors or commemorate celebrations.  They rarely perform for their community and they have no students.  No students.  The refrain of this is wearing me down.

Late that night, when Tianxiang and I were finally on the way to his house, we reveled in a surge of energy recalling the day’s events.  Wasn’t the shadow puppet museum going to be a real asset to the city?  Wasn’t Mrs. Guo the most genuine person?  And, man, they know how to throw a banquet.  It was inspiring to see such a concerted effort in such a small town.  Maybe, we mused, shadow puppetry does have a chance.

In the moment, I tried my best segue to tell him what an ongoing inspiration he’s been for me, indeed even in the direst of times.  He countered with an even deeper appreciation for our friendship and confessed that he’s often felt like giving up what feels like an unwinnable battle.  I had never known he questioned this, too.  “To know I have a student gives me a master’s sense of duty, it keeps me going.”  For a heavy moment, the despair overtook my gratitude – the both of us working so hard for an end that may come anyway and feeling the embarrassing difference with what that loss means to the two of us, respectively.  It hurts so deeply sometimes and I am nowhere near as intimate with this art form like Tianxiang is.

Still, as tempted as I was to wallow, I could see that buoyancy in Tianxiang’s eyes again.  He is infallible.  And that’s enough to keep this student afloat.

Tianxiang watches over the troupe’s performance and gives me a knowing glance from time to time.

Thanks for reading~

And now, a few extra photos to give you a sense of being there…

Puppet head envelopes strapped inside the trunk’s top for safe keeping

Selecting heads for the next puppet actor

The loudspeaker set up over the kitchen garden

Our hero

A table of scripts, each package represents an entire story

A package of books for one shadow play story, historically performed over a few nights of a festival.  Often times, they are referred to as a ‘nine-book story’ or a ‘twelve-book story’

The troupe, Mrs. Guo and I

Second Time’s A Charm

Last year, restless from too much research and too little creation in the middle of my Fulbright year, I put together a small project to test a few theories I’d been churning over in my mind.  And of course, to have a little fun.

The Beijing Hutong Shadow Tour was born and in that small shadow screen I secured to my bike I discovered a world of possibility.  The common theory that shadow puppetry in China is dying on account of fragmented rural communities from increasing rates of urbanization could only be partially true…I figured that the audience hadn’t vanished, simply moved.  Urban China is in some ways more suited to outdoor performance and instantaneous gatherings than their rural counterparts.

Last year’s performance seemed to prove that theory correct: each performance of our little 5 minute show garnered dozens of curious onlookers from every walk of life.  Their enjoyment was palpable in the sticky summer air.

It was so enjoyable, I couldn’t leave it be.  And as I grow my own body of work, I’m beginning to realize just how great it is to do something again.  I love the second time.  Your pleasures doubled and your sorrows halved.  The testing, the mistakes, and the stress has been drained out of the process and what you’re left with is the joy of making within a familiar framework, letting you funnel your energy into other things – growing so much more in the process.

I was also in the middle of a tough spot with my big shadow show at home.  We were just about to put up the show, but it seemed something wasn’t quite right and no amount of stewing or head-banging could clarify it for me.  I had a hunch that revisiting this project would turn a light on for me.

For this year’s project, I engaged the help of my very good friend, French artist Julie Peters Desteract, who lives and works in Beijing and has been witness to my work all throughout last year.  She is a shadow artist who is also interested in the intersection of practionership and research – focusing on the Miao minority culture of Southern China and their work with textiles.   What a joy to combine forces with such a woman!  It was a dreamy week of waking up, playing with puppets, eating soft boiled eggs for breakfast, biking around in search of materials, testing shadows in the mosquito-y night and then making some more. We made all new puppets for a more in-depth ‘slice of life’ show:  illuminating Beijing hutong culture and its incredible architecture, cuisine, social fabric and nightlife.  She pushed me to think past my first instincts and use the word shadow to encompass more.

Come Monday night, we set up our little screen and puppet arsenal in front of the new Zajia performance space just east of the Bell Tower.  At sundown, it looked like a ghost town – just delivery boys and chefs hanging out for a smoke and the occasional ring of a bike bell passing by.  It seemed everyone had already gathered with their dancing group in the nearby squares, dim melodies of tango and Chinese pop mixed with the rest of the aural fabric.  As always, before the light clicks on – you wonder if anyone will stop, listen or care.

But of course, somehow they do.

This year, to my absolute joy, the audience that cared was rich and varied – the delivery boys and chefs came a little closer along with the passerbys on foot and on wheels.  Our Chinese and foreign friends, locals, educators, ex-pats, fellow artists, shop owners and so many more came to stand and wonder in the nighttime with us.  And best of all, they stayed.  When the last notes of our tune died down and so had the applause, curious faces of the adults crept around the screen – and they weren’t shy about picking up those sticks.  There were conversations erupting everywhere, and there were smiles.  We were congratulated by a number of locals, given kabobs as thanks and ‘cheers’ with water bottles.  All talked about memories, past, China’s wealth of culture and its present peril.

Most beautiful, was a young man I noticed lurking in the back of the crowd for all our shows the first night.  I beckoned him forth a few times as I could see, inside, he was dying to try them.  He scurried away at the attention and I shouted after him that we’d be there again on Wednesday night.  I thought about him for two days, wondering what he saw that attracted him so – how he seemed to be there inspite of himself.

On Wednesday night, I looked for him – in vain it seemed – until I saw him, again, lurking at the back of the crowd during our last show.  This time, before I could put him on the spot, he ran forward to drop fresh bottles of water for us and again, like a shadow, disappeared into the night with a contagious grin on his face.

The conversations, the memories, the community, and that rare light inside someone that’s triggered by a mere shadow – I let a held breath go in silence.  These were the reminders I needed, the clarity I sought.

So often, I’m consumed in my art making by the product itself, pushing myself to perfectionism in a form that demands everything but.  Instead, I must remember that the performance is merely a vehicle, a reminder, a trigger, a new memory of a thing we’ve forgotten and want to remember.  It begins the thing, it is not the thing.

And this has made all the difference

Thanks for reading and enjoy the pictures ~

*All photos by Dave Pei unless noted

Photo by Chelin Miller

You can’t do a shadow show about Beijing culture and not include some noodles.

Maomao helps Julie and I in the first scene, complete with Ambulance in the background.  They managed to drive around us…

Julie lends her beautiful artistry by developing side panels that can be painted upon in performance – the audience gets to watch the hutong architecture come to life right before their eyes.

Doggy down: our main dog character swirls in limbo from our bowl of noodles to the hutong alleyways.

L-R: Myself, Maomao, Julie, Serge

Because we had no program, I’d like to put my Thank You’s here:

• Julie for her help, encouragement, artistry and participation.  And for always having a couch for me to crash on.
• Maomao (of the Shadow Art Hotel)for stepping in just when we needed him
• Dave Pei for his generous videography and photography
• Thanks for playing with us, Serge Onnen
• Chelin Miller for her cheerleading and photography
• Sylvie for running with my idea the first time around
• My parents, for everything
• The Beijing Hutongs for being such a lovely place to call home for a second summer