SELFHELP LATIMER GARDENS OLDER ADULT CENTER SHADOW PUPPET STORYTELLING WORKSHOP Friday June 2, 2023

 SELFHELP LATIMER GARDENS OLDER ADULT CENTER

SHADOW PUPPET STORYTELLING WORKSHOP

Friday June 2, 2023


We are so fortunate to have an enthusiastic and dedicated group of students at the Selfhelp Latimer Older Adult Center. They arrive early to rehearse their shadow puppet performance and take every opportunity to develop and hone their skills. I am thrilled to be working with my amazing colleague Spica Wobbe again and honored to have this chance to meet and work with more talented older adults. Both Spica and I want to express our sincerest gratitude to Helen Yang the Director and her staff who have always made us feel so welcome and cheered on the participants so enthusiastically. These students love a challenge and rise to the occasion, experimenting with different forms and creating some incredible special effects.

 

CK (Chuan Kui) arrived early so she could set up her shadow puppets and make sure everything was in its rightful place. Her shadow puppetry performance documents the unique custom of collecting discarded papers with writing on them and then burning them at the end of the year at the "Cherishing Characters Pavilion". This is a custom in China after the Ming and Qing Dynasties in the Han society. CK incorporates musical and sound effects as well as clever use of color to create the fire into which the pacers are thrown and the fireworks after the ceremony. 

 

Susana shared with us her love of art in My Artistic Genes, including singing Cantonese Opera accompanied by a beautifully drawn and colored opera face, and her ribbon art, which she demonstrated with actual ribbons as well as the finished products. She tells of how she joined art and craft workshops for parents offered at her child’s school and was then asked to help fundraise, which she did very successfully by selling her artwork. 

 

In Qiu Ping’s Memory of My Youth During the Cultural Revolution, she tells of being forced to leave her family as a young girl and travel by steamboat and truck to the Great Northern Wilderness to a forced labor camp. There she worked in the fields with a hoe, demonstrated proficiently by moving the arm of her puppet with the hoe attached. She tells of the cold which is effectively portrayed by holding a plastic patterned bowl in front of the light and turning it. 

 

Chun Qin and Jia Ling are married and tell the story of how their daughter wanted to study ballet in NYC. To support this Dream, they all left Shanghai as a family and moved to NY, where she enrolled in a dance school. They have built a happy life here and now their grandson aspires to be an Olympic swimmer. Jia Ling, a talented artist, quickly designed and made 2 puppets in class, the Olympic rings, and a swimmer which they practiced manipulating behind their shadow screen using blue cellophane as the water.  

 

Each participant is excited to showcase their achievements in the Public Celebration at Flushing Town Hall next week where they will perform their shadow puppet story for students from our other Shadow Puppet Storytelling Workshop as well as family, friends, and invited guests.

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