THE ART OF SHADOW THEATER: FAMILY STORIES VIRTUAL ASSEMBLY With PS20Q

THE ART OF SHADOW THEATER:

 FAMILY STORIES VIRTUAL ASSEMBLY

With PS20Q

6.19.2021T

Spica and I were honored to be asked to present at Flushing Town Hall’s Virtual Assemblies for students and their families attending PS20Q or John Bowne Elementary School. Thank you to Haihong Chen, FTH’s Education & Public Programs Administrator and Monique Lizcano, Parent Coordinator at the school. We were excited to share our love of shadow theater with the children and their families.

After introducing ourselves we spoke about how our shadow is always with us, like our best friend, and it’s even there in the dark! Images of shadow puppetry from Cambodia, where fire is used as the light source and puppeteers manipulate large shadow puppets using two hands, India, where shadow puppetry is used to tell Hindu epics such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, Malaysia, and Thailand where shadow puppetry shares similar elements. Next, we shared an image of the well-known Turkish shadow puppets, Karagoz and Hacivat who are often used as social commentators and a behind the scenes look at Chinese shadow puppetry. 

 

I played our shadow theatre shows, “Christmas Holidays'', which told the story of my Australian school vacations with my family and “My Childhood Home”, which told the story of Spica’s childhood growing up in Taipei, Taiwan. Asking questions is a great way to begin thinking about what story you want to tell. Interviewing someone is key, and from the answers we can find out the WHO (character). WHERE (place), WHEN (time), WHAT (objects or props as they are called in the theater) and the HOW (action). Once we have our storyline then we need three things to create Shadow Theater; a screen, which is a surface to catch the light, a light source, and objects.

 

Spica demonstrated how to catch the shadow of her hand on a piece of paper using a flashlight, and make it change size and shape by simply moving the distance of the paper. We encouraged the students watching to experiment using the light from their phones to create shadows on the wall or even the ceiling. 

 

Characters were created using paper cut out figures attached to a rod or even 3D found objects, which suddenly came alive when they were put between a light source and a screen. Scenery can be made from recycled material, such as “grass” from Xmas tinsel stuck onto cardboard, or colored cellophane can create a watery effect. Audience members experimented with found objects, Ms. Lizcano used her son’s action figure to create a shadow on her wall and Anson amazed us with different shadows he created from objects he found including a boat he’d made with serrated sails. 

 

Have fun playing with shadows and see what interesting and unique stories you can create!