Shadow play production process

Usually, it is necessary to go through eight processes, such as selecting the skin, making the skin, drawing the draft, over the draft, engraving, applying color, sweating and ironing, and embellishing the combination into the process.

China's vast area, the shadow of each place has its own characteristics, but the shadow of the manufacturing order is mostly similar, usually through the selection of leather, leather, drawing, draft, draft, carving, coloring, sweating ironing, embellishments combined with the eight processes, hand-carved more than 3,000 knives, it is a complex and ingenious process.

First, the skin will be soaked, scraped thin, smoothed, and then, the artists will be a variety of figures depicted on it, with a variety of models of knives carved, and then painted with color.

The carvings are usually done with yang carving and sometimes with yin carving. Painting coloring koji women's hair ornaments and costumes are mostly patterned with flowers, grass, clouds, phoenixes and other patterns, while men use dragons, tigers, water, clouds and other patterns as motifs. Loyal and good characters for the five-pointed surface, the back of the characters for the seven-pointed surface. The appearance of the characters is the same as that of the theater characters, with complete footwear for the living, the dan, the pure and the ugly.

Made of the shadow as high as 55 centimeters, low there are about 10 centimeters. The limbs and head of the shadow person are carved separately, with a line linkage and become, in order to play when the activity is free. A shadow person, to use five bamboo sticks to hold, the artist finger sensitive, often play the audience confused colors.

Not only is the work of the hands of the masterpiece, the mouth should also say, read, play, sing, and the foot should be braked gongs and drums. Acting shadow screen, is made of a 1 square meter size of white gauze. The white gauze is polished with fish oil to make it bright and shiny.

When the show is on, the shadow is close to the screen, and the silhouette and the colorful colors are realistic and beautiful. The shadow props are small, the staging is convenient, and not subject to garden constraints, the actors do not need to be properly trained, so by the people's favorite. In the leather movie popular in the region, people will affectionately call it "a pick" art.

History of Shadow Theater:

There are five main categories of shadow theater roles: Sheng, Dan, Jingsheng, Mou and Chou. The characters in shadow play are composed of eleven pieces, including head, upper body, lower body, two legs, two upper arms, two lower arms and two hands, and the performers make the characters make various movements by controlling a main pole in front of the neck collar of the characters and two playing poles at the ends of the two hands.

In addition to the common roles mentioned above, there are also different images of emperors and kings, civil servants, military generals, scholars, common people and clowns in shadow theater. Shadow play, also known as "shadow play" or "light and shadow play", is a kind of folk drama in which the silhouettes of characters made of animal skins or cardboards are used to perform stories, and it is an ancient traditional art of Chinese folklore.

Shadow play began in the Western Han Dynasty, flourished in the Tang Dynasty, flourished in the Qing Dynasty, and spread to West Asia and Europe during the Yuan Dynasty period, with a long history and a far-reaching origin.In 2011, China's shadow play was selected as a representative list of intangible cultural heritage of mankind.In December 2018, the General Office of the Ministry of Education announced that the Shanghai Theatre Academy is the inheritance base of the Chinese outstanding traditional culture of shadow play.