Film-goers might remember Fugui (福貴), the main character in Zhang Yimou's (張藝謀) film To Live, (活著) who managed to survive the horror of the war during the 30s and 40s partly due to a small box full of shadow puppets.
In fact, these simple devices, little more than the cured and painted hides of animals put up against a cloth screen have provided the means of telling stories for more than 1,000 years. But in To Live, the same shadow puppets also very nearly brought about Fugui's demise in the 60s during the Cultural Revolution, which saw a wave of destruction sweep away much traditional culture.
The hiatus of shadow puppetry that followed the revolution, may, ironically, have contributed to the enormous international popularity of the Tangshan Shadow Play Theater (唐山市皮影劇團), a mainland troupe that is visiting Taiwan from April 12-25. With its bright, cinematic look, Tangshan looks very different from conventional ideas of shadow puppetry, which has earned its accolades and commissions to perform at venues like Disney World, the center of ultra-modern entertainment.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
According to troupe director Wang Jun-jie (王俊杰), this popularity has largely been due to the troupe's willingness to innovate and move with the times.
The thing that strikes the observer immediately with the Tangshan performance is the large size of the screen against which the puppets perform. Compared to the traditional shadow puppet screen, which rarely measured more than two by three meters, Tangshan utilizes a screen the size of that used in a cinema.
The puppets, too, are much larger, sometimes measuring more than a meter in height, and they incorporate many detailed actions, such as movement of the mouth and eyes, that would be impossible with conventional shadow puppets.
All this change makes the mainland troupe's style a marked contrast to Taiwanese troupes. "They are much more traditional," said Xu Shu-shan (徐樹山), manager of the group.
Chiu Yi-feng (邱一峰), a doctoral student at National Cheng-chi University specializing in shadow puppet theater, agreed. He said Taiwan's shadow puppet theater and that of Tangshan had become very different because there was greater continuity with the past in Taiwan, making younger performers reluctant to cast aside the heritage of their elders. In China, he said, the Cultural Revolution had broken many links to the past, giving young performers greater freedom to innovate.
And at the Tangshan Shadow Play Theater that's just what they have been doing. Apart from the larger scale of the whole performance, many other changes have also been made to make the shadow puppets more attractive to a modern audience. They continue to use donkey skin as the main material, a fact that is emphasized by many members of Tangshan City's cultural community. It is something that makes Tangshan puppets distinct from those of other places, where cowhides are the usual materials.
According to the troupe's senior performer, donkey skins have superior flexibility and are more translucent, helping to create a more natural effect during the performance. But in some areas, the old has given way to the new, with the heads of all the puppets now being made from celluloid, allowing features to achieve a more three-dimensional, life-like effect.
In some cases, large animal puppets are completely made of celluloid because of its greater stiffness. Xu believes most of these changes will have little effect upon the fundamentals of the art, because other troupes are preserving the more traditional aspects.
Culture mavens might have mixed feelings about the cartoon-like quality that Tangshan cultivates and its incorporation of shows like Panda Mimi (熊貓咪咪) into the program that used to be the exclusive preserve of classic stories, such as The Cowherd and the Weaver Maid (牛郎織女) and The Monkey King Thrice Defeats the White-Bone Demon (孫悟空三打白骨精).
The recent success of the film The Legend of the Sacred Stone brought out tensions that exist in puppetry circles between those who seek to modernize the puppet theater and those who aim to preserve it in its traditional form. Tangshan clearly stands on the side of the modernizers.
Traditionalists might carp that Tangshan is no longer the real thing, but like Fugui, it is striving to find a place for itself in a rapidly changing world. Survival is the name of the game, and to judge from its reception at puppet festivals around the world, not least in Taiwan, it is doing very well.
Performance Information:
April 12 Chungshan Hall, Taichung
April 13 Yuming Primary School,
Hsinchung City
April 13 Taipei County Cultural
Bureau
April 15 Taoyuan County Cultural
Center
April 18 Chang Kai-shek Cultural
Center, Kaohsiung City
April 23 Chungli Art Gallery
April 24-25 Taiwan Art Education
Institute, Taipei City
All performances begin at 7:30pm.
Ticket prices: NT$200 to NT$800.
For more information, call 2771-5676.
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