A similar technique is employed by San Francisco-based ShadowLight Productions, formed in 1972 by one of the few Americans trained in traditional Balinese shadow theatre, Larry Reed. While using traditional-style puppetry, the group draws on overhead projectors as a modern way of creating shadows. The narrative arc of the shadow puppets followed along with the depiction of Nijinsky’s inner conflicts, which was immortalized in the diaries he left behind.Įlsewhere in New York, meanwhile, the Chinese Theatre Works company has been using shadow puppets since 1990 as part of its efforts to adapt traditional Chinese performance practices for American audiences. “There’s a way in which this kind of directness and indirectness of shadow plays with questions I’m so passionately interested in - about how our images are thrown up on the screen of the world and how we manage that,” Myers said in an interview with Hyperallergic. Myers worked in collaboration with master craftspeople in Indonesia to design and create the shadow puppets used in the work, which made its world premiere at the festival this fall. Shadow puppets from Fire in the Hand, made in collaboration with master craftsmen in Indonesiaįor the Crossing the Line Festival, New York-based artist Christopher Myers chose to employ shadow puppets in Fire in the Head, a theatre performance about renowned 20th-century Polish dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky. Indeed, shadow-art traditions are included on UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in hopes of safeguarding them and raising awareness about their importance. For countries where shadow puppetry is a living art, the stories told during the course of a performance tend to be folklore, narratives of heritage. Shadow-puppet theatre is a global art form in which figures are illuminated by a light source onto a translucent screen, projecting shadows that are used to enact a narrative. With varied technologies and media dominating contemporary performance, practitioners of puppetry and scholars say this ancient form of theatre is under threat of extinction. A practice commonly believed to have originated in Asia (though its exact provenance is uncertain), the craft of shadow puppetry had historically been passed down, master-apprentice style, through the generations. present their shadow-puppet play to the class.Preserve or adapt, change or disappear? The quandary that most long-practiced arts eventually face is once again brought into focus, this time at the Crossing the Line Festival, where a new performance piece is employing a very old art form: shadow puppetry.use drama techniques to develop their shadow-puppet characters and stories.design and make shadow puppets to play the characters in their devised stories.study Greek myths (representative of the beginning of world theatre) and Maori myths (representative of the beginnings of New Zealand theatre) and, using drama elements and conventions, adapt themes for their own devised stories.Journal Entry: Using Freeze-frame Images to Structure the StoryĪ 10-week drama unit for year 10 (Level 5)īy Delia Baskerville, Drama Adviser, Wellington College of Education (2003) Learning objectives Journal Entry: Developing a Character through Flashback Understanding traditional shadow puppetry Journal Entry: Features of Indonesian Shadow Puppetry Drama Senior Secondary Teaching and Learning Guideīack to the 'Jump link' navigation, at the top of the page.Journal Entry: Developing a Character through Flashback.Understanding traditional shadow puppetry.
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