Australia Richard Bradshaw is an Australian shadow puppeteer known for his characters like "Super Kangaroo". Bradshaw's puppetry has been featured in television programs made by
Jim Henson as well as the long-running ABC children's TV series
Play School. The Shadow Theatre of Anaphoria (relocated to Australia from California) combines a mixture of reconstructed and original puppets with multiple sources of lights. The company is under the direction of
Kraig Grady. Australian company Shadowplay Studios' debut game
Projection: First Light was inspired by shadow puppetry and its art style replicates the traditional shadow play canvas using black props and sepia backgrounds. They visited Richard Bradshaw to gain more insight into shadow puppetry, to make their game more authentic and to get references for the game's shadow puppet characters.
Cambodia In
Cambodia, the shadow play is called
Nang Sbek Thom, or simply as
Sbek Thom (literally "large leather hide"),
Sbek Touch ("small leather hide") and
Sbek Por ("colored leather hide"). It is performed during sacred temple ceremonies, at private functions, and for the public in Cambodia's villages. The popular plays include the
Ramayana and
Mahabharata epics, as well as other Hindu myth and legends. It is a sacred performance, embodying Khmer beliefs built on the foundations and mythologies of
Brahmanism and
Buddhism.
China .|left|233x233px There are several myths and legends about the origins of shadow puppetry in China. The most famous one has it that Chinese shadow puppetry originated when the favorite
concubine of
Emperor Wu of Han (156 BCE – 87 BCE) died and magician Shao-weng promised to raise her spirit. The emperor could see a shadow that looked like her move behind the curtains that the magician had placed around some lit torches. It is often told that the magician used a shadow puppet, but the original text in
Book of Han gives no reason to believe in a relation to shadow puppetry. Although there are many earlier records of all kinds of puppetry in China, clear mention of Chinese shadow play does not occur until the
Northern Song dynasty (960–1127). A 1235 book mentions that the puppets were initially cut out of paper, but later made of colored leather or parchment. The stories were mostly based on history and half fact half fiction, but comedies were also performed. Shadow play in China is called
. There are two distinct styles of shadow play: Luanzhou (North China) and Sichuan (South China). Within Sichuan, there are two styles: Chuanbei piyingxi (Northern Sichuan) and Chengdu piyingxi. Cities that are included in the Northern Sichuan are Bazhong, Nanchong, and Guangyuan. Shadow theatre became quite popular as early as the
Song dynasty, when holidays were marked by the presentation of many shadow plays. During the
Ming dynasty there were 40 to 50 shadow show
troupes in the city of
Beijing alone. The earliest shadow theatre screens were made of
Washi paper. The storytellers generally used the art to tell events between various war kingdoms or stories of
Buddhist sources. Today, puppets made of
leather and moved on sticks are used to tell dramatic versions of traditional fairy tales and myths. In regions such as Shaanxi, Shandong, Gansu, and Sichuan, young apprentices learn to carve shadow puppets from ox hide using traditional tools like half-moon knives and fine awls, preserving both craftsmanship and performance through hands-on practice. In
Gansu province, it is accompanied by
Daoqing music, while in
Jilin, accompanying
Huanglong music forms some of the basis of modern opera. Chinese shadow puppetry is shown in the 1994
Zhang Yimou film
To Live.
Taiwan The origins of
Taiwan's shadow puppetry can be traced to the
Chaochow school of shadow puppet theatre. Commonly known as leather monkey shows or leather shows, the shadow plays were popular in
Tainan,
Kaohsiung, and
Pingtung as early as the
Qing dynasty (1644–1911 A.D.). Older puppeteers estimate that there were at least seventy shadow puppet troupes in the Kaohsiung area alone in the closing years of the Qing. Traditionally, the eight to twelve-inch puppet figures, and the stage scenery and props such as furniture, natural scenery, pagodas, halls, and plants, are all cut from leather. As shadow puppetry is based on light penetrating through a translucent sheet of cloth, the "shadows" are actually silhouettes seen by the audience in profile or face on. Taiwan's shadow plays are accompanied by Chaochow melodies which are often called "priest's melodies" owing to their similarity with the music used by Taoist priests at funerals. A large repertoire of some 300 scripts of the southern school of drama used in shadow puppetry and dating back to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries has been preserved in Taiwan and is considered to be a priceless cultural asset.
Terminology A number of terms are used to describe the different forms. • ,
píyĭngxì is a shadow theatre that uses leather puppets. The figures are usually moved behind a thin screen. It is not entirely a show of shadows, as the shadow is more of a silhouette. This gives the figures some color on the screen; they are not 100% black and white. • ,
zhĭyĭngxì is paper shadow theatre. • ,
Zhōngguó yĭngxì is Chinese shadow theatre.
Europe In
Plato's
allegory of the cave (circa 380 BCE),
Socrates described a kind of shadow play with figures made out of stone, wood, or other materials, presented to prisoners who in all of their life could see nothing more than the shadows on the wall in front of them. This was an imaginative illustration of ideas about the (false or limited) relations between knowledge, education, and a truthful understanding of reality. Plato compared a wall that screens off the people who carry the figures to the kind of partitions used by puppet (
marionette) players to hide behind. Apparently, there was no existing form of shadow theatre known in
ancient Greece that Socrates/Plato could refer to. Shadow plays started spreading throughout Europe at the end of the 17th century, probably via Italy. It is known that several Italian showmen performed in Germany, France and England during this period. French missionaries brought the shadow show from China to
France in 1767 and put on performances in
Paris and
Marseille, causing quite a stir. In time, the
ombres chinoises (
French for "Chinese shadows") with local modification and embellishment, became the
ombres françaises and struck root in the country. The popularity of
ombres chinoises reflected the
chinoiserie fashion of the days. In 1775, Ambrogio (also known as Ambroise and Ambrose) staged ambitious shows in Paris and London. The cabaret
Le Chat noir ("The Black Cat") produced 45 ''Théatre d'ombres'' shows between 1885 and 1896 under the management of
Rodolphe Salis. Behind a screen on the second floor of the establishment, the artist
Henri Rivière worked with up to 20 assistants in a large,
oxy-hydrogen back-lit performance area and used a double optical
lantern to project backgrounds. Figures were originally cardboard cut-outs, but were replaced with zinc figures since 1887. Various artists took part in the creation, including
Steinlen,
Adolphe Willette and
Albert Robida.
Caran d'Ache designed circa 50 cut-outs for the very popular 1888 show ''L'Epopée''.
Musée d'Orsay has circa 40 original zinc figures in its collection. Other cabarets would produce their own versions; the
ombres evolved into numerous theatrical productions and had a major influence on
phantasmagoria. In Italy, the
Museum of Precinema collezione Minici Zotti in
Padua houses a collection of 70 French shadow puppets, similar to those used in the cabaret Le Chat Noir, together with an original theatre and painted backdrops, as well as two magic lanterns for projecting scenes. So far, the shadow plays identified are ''La Marche a l'étoile
(introduced by Henri Rivière), Le Sphinx
(introduced by Amédée Vignola), L'Âge d'or
and Le Carneval de Venise''. The shadow puppets were presumably created for a tour in France or abroad at the end of the 19th century. Nowadays, several theatre companies in France are developing the practice of shadow puppets: Le Théâtre des Ombres, Le Théâtre du Petit Miroir, Le Théâtre Les Chaises, and La Loupiote.
India and
Ravana in
tholu bommalata, the shadow puppet tradition of
Andhra Pradesh, India Shadow puppets are an ancient part of India's culture, particularly regionally as the
keelu bomme and
Tholu bommalata of
Andhra Pradesh, the
Togalu gombeyaata in
Karnataka, the
charma bahuli natya in
Maharashtra, the
Ravana chhaya in
Odisha, the
Tholpavakoothu in
Kerala and
Tamil Nadu. Shadow puppet play is also found in pictorial traditions in India, such as temple mural painting, loose-leaf folio paintings, and the narrative paintings. Dance forms such as the
Chhau of
Odisha literally mean "shadow". The shadow theatre dance drama theatre are usually performed on platform stages attached to
Hindu temples, and in some regions these are called
Koothu Madams or
Koothambalams. In many regions, the puppet drama play is performed by itinerant artist families on temporary stages during major temple festivals. During the 19th century and early parts of the 20th century of the colonial era, Indologists believed that shadow puppet plays had become extinct in India, though mentioned in its ancient Sanskrit texts. According to Beth Osnes, the
tholu bommalata shadow puppet theatre dates back to the 3rd century BCE, and has attracted patronage ever since. The puppets used in a
tholu bommalata performance, states Phyllis Dircks, are "translucent, lusciously multicolored leather figures four to five feet tall, and feature one or two articulated arms". The process of making the puppets is an elaborate ritual, where the artist families in India pray, go into seclusion, produce the required art work, then celebrate the "metaphorical birth of a puppet" with flowers and incense. The
tholu pava koothu of Kerala uses leather puppets whose images are projected on a backlit screen. The shadows are used to creatively express characters and stories in the
Ramayana. A complete performance of the epic can take forty-one nights, while an abridged performance lasts as few as seven days. One feature of the
tholu pava koothu show is that it is a team performance of puppeteers, while other shadow plays such as the
wayang of Indonesia are performed by a single puppeteer for the same
Ramayana story. wherein a dramatic story is told through shadows thrown by puppets and sometimes combined with human characters. Wayang is an ancient form of storytelling that renowned for its elaborate puppets and complex musical styles. The earliest evidence is from the late 1st millennium CE, in medieval-era texts and archeological sites. Around 860 CE an Old Javanese charter issued by Maharaja Sri Lokapala mentions three sorts of performers: atapukan, aringgit, and abanol. Ringgit is described in an 11th-century Javanese poem as a leather shadow figure. There are different kind of performers in Thailand's shadow play.
Nang samai performers are more modern in terms of music and dialogue while
Nang booraan performers are more traditional. Performances are normally accompanied by a combination of
songs and
chants. Moreover, there are specific types of performances in Thailand that are political than theatrical like which are called
nang kaanmuang.
Turkey A more bawdy comedy tradition of shadow play was widespread throughout the
Ottoman Empire, possibly since the late 14th century. It was centered around the contrasting interaction between the figures
Karagöz and Hacivat: an unprincipled peasant and his fussy, educated companion. Together with other characters they represented all the major social groups in Ottoman culture. The theatres had an enormous following and would take place in coffee houses and in rich private houses and even performed before the sultan. Every quarter of the city had its own Karagöz. The Karagöz theatre consisted of a three sided booth covered with a curtain printed with branches and roses and a white cotton screen by about three feet by four which was inserted in the front. The performance had a three man orchestra who sat at the foot of a small raised stage where they would play for the audience. The show would start when the puppet master lit the oil lamp. The show could be introduced by a singer, accompanied by a tambourine player. The background and scenery would sometimes include moving ships, riders moving on horseback, swaying palm trees and even dragons. The sound effects included songs and various voices. Karagöz theatre was also adapted in Egypt and North Africa. ==Shadow puppetry today==