Chinese Shadow Puppetry in the History Books

A young scholar approaches two young ladies.

The silence on this blog for the last few months has not been for lack of content, on the contrary!  I’ve just begun my long road to a PhD and my focus, of course, is Chinese shadow puppetry.  Luckily, so far it has been nothing short of wonderful.  As one of my friends put it, “I think you’re the only person enjoying their first PhD semester in the entire world.”

My enjoyment is partially because the program I’m studying in is a flexible, practice-based interdisciplinary PhD, which is perfect for a self-guided student such as me.  I know what I need and they’re giving me the support to do just that.  Mostly, though, it’s because I love what I’m doing.  Spending days curled up on the couch, reading deeply about the form I care about so much is nothing short of a privilege.

In the last few months, I’ve finally had the chance to read through the written texts I’ve collected over the years about Chinese shadow puppetry and even find a few more.  I’ve spent time in rare books collections, made indulgent use of the inter-library loan system and absolutely exploited my newfound access to online journal databases.  It’s not easy to hunt this stuff down, almost as hard as tracking down a troupe in the countryside of China.

What’s struck me in the canon of texts is just how different the understanding of the form is depending on who’s writing about it.  This is true for anything – our position in the world so limiting our purview on everything we see – but strikingly true here.   In some ways, this was frustrating at first.  How was I supposed to make sense of it?  And in other ways this is exactly what is has to be and always will be.  A live performance art form is evolving in every iteration, every performance.  Multiply this by region, generation and circumstance and you do have a pluralistic performance art form that can be almost anything you choose to describe it as.

Whatever I end up writing or creating to communicate my understanding of shadow puppetry will fall into this category sooner or later:  there is no way to capture its full essence, existence or possibility in any form.  Thank goodness, or I’d be gearing up for a pretty boring five years.

Thanks for reading~

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A short compiled Bibliography for anyone who is interested!

This list is certainly not exhaustive, but fairly complete of the easier to find texts in English.  Some are journal articles and some are books.  Most can be obtained from Jstor’s Online Journal Database, the inter-library loan system and your local library.

Chang, Lily. The lost roots of Chinese shadow theater: a comparison with the actors’ theater of China. Los Angeles, CA: Lecture at University of Southern California, 1982. Print.

Chen, Fan. Visions for the masses: Chinese shadow plays from Shaanxi and Shanxi. Ithaca, N.Y.: East Asia Program, Cornell University, 2004. Print.

Chen, Fan. Chinese shadow theatre history, popular religion, and women warriors. Montreal [Que.: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007. Print.

Chen, Fan Pen Li, and Bradford Clark. “A Survey of Puppetry in China (Summers 2008-2009).” Asian Theatre Journal 27.2 (2010): 333-365. Print.

Cohen, Alvin. “Documentation Relating to the Origins of the Chinese Shadow Puppet Theater  .” Asia Major 13.1 (2000): 83-108. Print.

Kronthal, Lisa. “Conservation of Chinese Shadow Figures: Investigations into their Manufacture, Storage, and Treatment.” Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 40.1 (2001): 1-14. Print.

Laufer, Berthold. Oriental theatricals. Chicago: [Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago], 1923. Print.

Liu, Jilin. Chinese shadow puppet plays. Beijing: Morning Glory Publishers, 1988. Print.

March, Benjamin, and Paul McPharlin. Chinese shadow figure plays and their making,. Detroit: Inland Press, 1938. Print.

Menzies, Grant. Shadow woman: the extraordinary career of Pauline Benton. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013. Print.

Pimpaneau, Jacques.  Shadow figures of Asia from the collection of Pauline Benton. Saint Paul, Minn.: Minnesota Museum of Art, 1970. Print.

Swiderski, Richard M. . “The Aesthetics of a Contemporary Chinese Shadow Theatre.” Asian Folklore Studies 43.2 (1984): 261-273. Print.

Wimsatt, Genevieve. Chinese shadow shows,. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936. Print.

The Way We See It

I’ve been back home for over two months now.  And while I feel a longing for the shadow puppet trail, I’ve also been able to do a different kind of searching here in America.  It’s calmed my anxiety about the trail running cold or me losing my steam.  This time of processing and pondering is necessary to get to a more fulfilling continuation of the work.

Diving further into historical research while simultaneously building new work for the shadow theatre with my Chinese shadow training, has gotten me caught in some in some swirls of cyclical discovery and impossible intersections.   Sometimes, there is no way to gracefully integrate the old with the new.  Sometimes, it happens naturally.

My fascination with Chinese shadow puppetry has as much to do with what is presented as how it is presented.

The traditional countryside performances are the center of community celebrations and usually took place from sundown to sunup.

The crowd demographic changes throughout the night; the elderly were the last ones standing at 4am.  The stage is carted in by donkey, usually a bundle of long bamboo sticks or skinny tree trunks that are strung together to create a surprisingly sturdy screen for 6 or 7 troupe members and can be viewed from 360 degrees.

When I saw my first performance, I greedily sat myself in front and center in what I thought was the best seat in the house.

Once the music started and the puppets were underway, it became clear that I was operating under a very Western understanding of ‘best seat in the house’.  The areas where you could watch the puppet show from backstage were being vied for like Justin Bieber’s autograph.  My moment of embarrassment was cut short by my desire to get back there.

To watch a shadow show from behind the screen!  It was better than Noises Off.  It was even better than finding out who that man behind the curtain was in Wizard of Oz. 

This was the most important element I wanted to incorporate in my work when I returned to the states; the simple experience of destroying the fourth wall and presenting the entire process of performance as the show itself.  Not a promenade show, not a show in-the-round, but a show in which all aspects of creating the performance are stage worthy and just as entertaining as what’s going on in the ‘front.’

While doing more historical reading this last month, I learned that in some regions, viewing traditional Chinese shadow puppet plays from the back wasn’t always encouraged.  There was a time when the masters didn’t want their secrets exposed – to keep the magic intact.  But recently, some had come to believe that the back had opened up to compete with other forms of entertainment.   So funny – I had assumed without questions that the way I was viewing it now was the way it has always been viewed.  I had forgotten all my other research about the evolutionary nature of a folk art – the change necessary for survival.  But, it also reminded me that change isn’t always for the worse.  At least, in my opinion.

Perhaps a hundred years ago, when the audience was lagging due to competing forms of entertainment, some masters came to believe the same things I do now – which is the beauty of live performance is making magic within the limitations: invisible budgets, bad acoustics, gravity, etc.  And perhaps there is also magic inherent in the cogs that make that magic happen.  To expose those cogs is to embrace and celebrate these limitations, making them precious and valued again.

Thanks for reading~

The Turtle and Crane Phenomenon

In 2008, when I first went to China to study with a traditional shadow puppet troupe, I had a very narrow view of the form.   I only studied in one region and one troupe.

In 2011, I visited numerous troupes in nine provinces.  Needless to say, I had to reassess some previous assumptions.

Within my first few months of 2011, I became familiar with the Beijing/Hebei and Xi’an areas.  And within just a few months, I started to see a very strange trend – one that I wouldn’t fully understand until the end of my trip.

Both the Longzaitian troupe in Beijing, the Yutian troupe in Xi’an and the Shaanxi Provincial Theatre had a show entitled Turtle and Crane.  It’s a simple, modern show  with colorful animal protagonists and some perfect lilies bordering a perfectly bucolic pond.  An even cute and catchier score accompanies a short, 10-minute wander into this cute story.  But, even stranger, the puppets were nearly identical – and I couldn’t be certain, but the music sounded the same as well.

Longzaitian Troupe, Beijing China

Tengchong Shadow Puppet Troupe, Yunnan China

During my third viewing of the show in Xi’an, I naïvely asked how each troupe had come by the story.  I was always met with an elusive answer.  “Do you like it?” or “We’ve done this one for 15 years”.   Hmmm.  Still, I chalked it up to coincidence or a contained case of the ‘copies’.  But, throughout the year, I saw this same performance in nearly all provinces and nearly every troupe – including the more remote cities of Tengchong, Yunnan and Yunmeng, Hubei. S eriously: identical story, scenery, puppets and music.

In December, towards the end of my Fulbright year, I went to the Cui museum in Beijing and asked Cui Yongping about the Turtle and Crane flyer he had posted to the wall in German.  “That’s the first show we took to Germany in the 1980s”.   This was the first time I realized that the piece might have historical significance.

It wasn’t until I was reading a shadow puppet history book, from China, that I ran across a paragraph that explains Turtle and Crane as the first ‘National’ shadow production of China.

Funded as a government initiative, Turtle and Crane was created by an intellectual named Zhai Yi, in collaboration with two shadow puppet artists, in 1952 just after the formation of new China.  On the surface, it was simply an attempt to update the folk art form, but deep down it was meant to pacify what could have otherwise been a tool for subversion.

Of course, the shadow troupes of the time took it up with open arms, not wanting to challenge the new status quo.  It spread like wildfire.

Government officials were suspicious of traditional shadow puppetry because of its grassroots origins and its widespread popularity throughout the mainland.  Shows made by and for the people meant messages they couldn’t control.  At the time of the Communist revolution, and later the Cultural Revolution, troupes were forbidden to perform and most were forced to destroy their inherited trunks of shadow puppetry.  In some regions, a single troupe was allowed to continue – as long as they took their directives from the government.  Turtle and Crane was just the beginning.

Tai’an Shadow Puppetry Troupe, Shandong China

Master Qin, Hubei China

Some argue that shadow puppetry in China has continued through the mid-century but I consider this post-revolution wave a complete break.  To see a traditional show compared with a show like Turtle and Crane, I think you’d agree.

I believe in the need for art to evolve along with the people who create it, nothing is truly traditional as it’s always changing, but evolution indicates a continuum.   These new shows aren’t made by the community or artists who they are presented to, they have no regional relevance to their constituents and are so universal and pacified as to render them meaningless.   And this directive was an immediate, inorganic shift inspired by the country’s regime change.

After China opened back up in the 1980s, traditional troupes tried to pick up where they left off in the 1950s, only to find their shows about emperors and the peasant class had no place in the new China.  This break, coupled with urbanization and the digital era, has left traditional shadow puppetry floundering.   With no funding and no audiences, troupes have polarized to extremes.  Those troupes that were ‘government sponsored’ during the revolution continue to make shadow puppetry along the lines of Turtle and Crane to appeal to the modern audience, while troupes that were banned are trying to eek out a living performing the shows from way back when to an ever dwindling audience.

No one, save a few small projects here and there, has the time, money, or means to start a deliberate movement to bring the traditional form into the modern age.    Right now, it’s either or.

As I process through my year and how I want to proceed forward with my research and practice, this desire to foster a more organic evolution has become louder than others (in tandem with my desire to preserve the traditional puppet making methods).   But, as a foreigner, can I be the one to push this agenda?  I have spoken with a few of my masters on the issue and they are for it.  They’ve encouraged me to use whatever elements I’ve gleaned from their teachings and make it my own, fuse it, merge it, mash it and present it to a new audience.

Perhaps in these times of imminent extinction, the need for continuation should trump my worries of being inauthentic.   Still, I hope to proceed with a healthy dose of awareness mixed with urgency.

Thanks for reading~