The basic features of Haining shadow play

Haining Shadow Theater has three features: vocal cavity, face modeling and repertoire. First of all, the voice is old. At the beginning of the Southern Song Dynasty, when the shadow play was first introduced to Haining, the voice was relatively simple, and later influenced by the Kun Cavity and Jiangnan Silk and Bamboo, forming the Haining shadow play's own tunes. There are three systems: one is chaotic play, high and exciting, generally used for open stage play and martial arts play, accompanied by banhu and erhu, its main cavity for three five seven, Wen Erfan, Wu Erfan, Wen Sanfan, Wu Sanfan, Hui Long, called Wang Long, etc.; the second is the high cavity, the beauty of the marriage of elegant, generally used for lyrical narration of the play, accompanied by flute, erhu, and the voice of the cavity has a long cavity, sunrise Fusang, deep down to pay homage to the floor, up on a building, eighteen boards, dangtou, Junguan, etc.; the third is the qupai, which is a song of the opera. The third one is the songboard, including gongs and drums, which is used for the special music of specific environment, such as Yan Yang Tian, Taiji Yin Block, Xiang Yun Wan Dao, and Downfall of the Earth. The whole music tune plate tunes nearly a hundred kinds, left forty kinds.

Secondly, the shape of the skin man's face is quite distinctive. Its face painting is both close to and different from Peking Opera. It is exaggerated and molded according to the different characters of loyalty, treachery, virtue and righteousness, and different expressions of joy, anger and sadness. In order to meet the development of the plot, to adapt to the operation of the artistic needs, sometimes the same character to change several times.