SURREY — Remember when you were a kid and you shone a flashlight at your hand so its shadow would appear on a wall? Then you'd shape your fingers so it would look like a dog, or a bunny or that weird guy down the street?
That's hand shadow puppetry. Now, replace your hand with elaborate, articulated figures made from leather. Replace the flashlight with a bank of lights that shine on a translucent screen. Get a crew of highly skilled performers to manipulate the figures using a series of handheld rods.
Add music, sound effects, and a story, and you have the basis of an art form, originated a few thousand years ago in southeast Asia, known as "shadow play."
One of the most celebrated modern purveyors of shadow play arrived in Canada last week, direct from China, for a series of performances throughout the Lower Mainland.
Surrey's lucky enough to get four of those performances — this Friday (Feb. 20) and Saturday (Feb. 21) at City Hall Centre Stage (link to tickets here).
You might want to be there. Chances like this don't come along every day.
At Chinatown's Sun Yet-Sen Garden on Feb. 6, the Beijing Shadow Play Art Troupe made its first official public appearance since setting foot on Canadian soil. Six performers in all, including renowned puppet master Baogang Lu, they talked to the media with the assistance of a translator and showed off their puppetry without the aid of backlights or a screen.
It was a slightly surreal experience in a slightly surreal setting. Later, Lu and his five charges toured the outdoor garden under a threatening sky and acted the part of first-time tourists, taking and posing for photos, chatting, joking, and drinking in the surroundings of this urban oasis.
Three days later at the Richmond Art Gallery, as the centrepiece of that city's Children's Art Festival, the troupe debuted its show to a large gathering of curious children and adults. The kids sat on mats placed on the floor, while the grown-ups were for the most part relegated to the theatre seats further back.
The room grew dim and the performance began. In the corner of the screen, a flower. A flower that magically bloomed as we watched. Then a frog, a frog that hopped and snared bugs from the sky. A crane flew in from above, landed on a rock and sat there preening. Soon, the crane interacted with a turtle and the giggles turned into laughter. And the odd gasp too.
It wasn't the actions of the "puppets" so much as the subtlety and the complexity of those actions that inevitably drew in the crowd. These weren't mere puppets - they were real. They were fluid. I'm not sure who was more mesmerized - the kids who were ready to be entertained or the adults who had a better grasp on what it must take to make this happen.
One thing is sure: the dainty perfection of the presentation as seen from an audience perspective lays in stark contrast to the action behind the screen. There, each of the halfdozen performers whip about in an organized frenzy, their arms and fingers looping above and below the performers to their right and to their left.
When the moment is appropriate, they leave the screen, grab another puppet from the floor, and re-insert themselves at a different position.
At one point during the Richmond event, Lu controlled a crazily articulated squirrel using no less than six separate rods, each rod attached to one of six separate squirrel body joints. It was a stunning display of digital dexterity. There is some worry that in this modern, computerized world, ancient art forms such as shadow play will eventually evaporate.
The affable Lu begs to differ.
"I think that is an extreme point of view. Shadow play has existed in China for more than 2,000 years. The fact that it is still around today must have its reasons. It is an art of the people.
"Even with that said, I cannot deny that, with the emergence of movies, video games, and other forms of entertainment, Shadow play has to fight for the audience market. I believe this is a good thing.
"Only through competition can you move forward. Shadow play of next year will be very different than shadow play of today. Advances in lighting, techniques, music, stories, and special effects will all contribute to creating and preserving this artistic culture."
See for yourself next week at Centre Stage.
Show times are 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Friday and 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. on Saturday. Short workshops, where interested parties can create and experiment with their own shadow puppets, follow each performance.
For more information, go to http://www.surrey.ca/culture-recreation/16430.aspx.