What is shadow play?

Shadow play, also known as light and shadow, is named after the characters carved with animal skins perform with bright cloth under the illumination of light, and it is one of the widely circulated puppet shows in China.

Overview:

Shadow play is a kind of folk drama that uses light to illuminate the silhouette of a character [1] made of animal skin or cardboard to perform a story. In the performance, the artists manipulated the opera characters behind the white curtain, sang stories with local popular tunes, and matched them with percussion instruments and strings, which had a strong local flavor. In rural areas of Henan and Shanxi, this simple folk art form is very popular with people. By the Yuan Dynasty, shadow play had spread to various countries. This art form originated in China [2] is fascinated by many foreign opera fans, and people affectionately call it "China Shadow Play Lamp". The production process is as follows: first, soak the leather, scrape it flat and grind it flat, then the artist draws maps of various figures on it, chisels it with various knives, and then paints it with colors. When carving, it is usually front carving and sometimes back carving. Painting and dyeing pay attention to women's hair accessories and costumes with flowers, grass, clouds, phoenix and other patterns as patterns, while men use dragons, tigers, water, clouds and other patterns as patterns. A loyal minister has five sides, and a villain has seven sides. Character modeling and drama characters, life, Dan, clean and ugly roles are complete. The height of shadow play is 55 cm, and the height of shadow play is about 10 cm. The limbs and heads of shadow puppeteers are carved separately and composed of lines, so they can move freely when performing. A shadow puppet actor needs five bamboo sticks to manipulate, and the artist's fingers are flexible, which often dazzles the audience. You should not only have excellent skills in your hands, but also speak, read, play and sing in your mouth, and brake gongs and drums at your feet. The screen of shadow play is a piece of white gauze with the size of 1 square meter. The white yarn becomes crisp and bright after being polished by fish oil. During the performance, the shadow play moves close to the screen, and the characters and colorful colors are really moving. Shadow play is popular because of its small props, convenient performance, no venue restrictions and no formal training for actors. In areas where shadow play is popular, people will affectionately call it the art of "picking a burden"

See: /view /view/6358 1.htm for details.