Celebrations bring charm of Chinese culture to US

Children sat cross-legged in front of the stage, waiting eagerly for a shadow-puppet performance as families gathered at the China Institute on Sunday in New York to celebrate the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival.

"It's all about 'chuan cheng', heritage passed down together by Americans and Chinese," Kuang-Yu Fong, a Chinese opera performer from Taiwan and cofounder of Chinese Theatre Works, told China Daily. "The China Institute was founded nearly a century ago by both American and Chinese educators, and for us, the puppets we use today were crafted by American artists and performed by both."

Shadow puppetry — a traditional form of Chinese folk theater that combines light, music and movement as performers manipulate translucent puppets behind a screen to tell stories from history, novels or traditional legends — can trace its roots back to the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220). In 2011, Chinese shadow puppetry was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The shadow puppets used in the performance came from one of the US pioneers, Pauline Benton, who encountered shadow puppetry in 1923 at the age of 25. After learning its basic techniques, she spent the 1920s and 1930s traveling between China and the US, observing performances and collecting puppets.

Decades later, Benton's students stored her collection in a warehouse, where it remained forgotten until the 1980s, when Jo Humphrey, a second-generation shadow puppet player, rediscovered it in New York and passed it on to Fong. After a century of journeying across continents, these historic puppets have been cleaned, restored and brought back to life on stage.

For this performance, Chinese Theatre Works also used digital technology, using overhead projectors and printed plastic silhouettes to reproduce the fine details of the original puppets.

"Traditional shadow puppetry could not change size easily, but with the digital version, we can play with scale and flexibility," Fong said.

Now, the New York-based nonprofit art institution has been preserved by Fong and her husband, US avant-garde puppeteer Stephen Kaplin, for more than 30 years.

Thoughtful fusion

"We need more people to see this art," Kaplin said. "To understand not only where it comes from, but what it can become. Through thoughtful fusion, we might find new ways to let it live and be seen."

Kaplin said the combination of traditional art and digital performance is important, as people need to find new means of presentation. But as cultural workers, it is also important to keep up the traditions that have been alive for centuries.

Chen Xiuyuan, a graduate student at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts who previously handled marketing and administrative work for Chinese Theatre Works, prepared for his first show as a performer.

Chen said he was "very nervous", adding that the live production required close teamwork and it was his first time on stage, but he felt excited about the show.

"We need more young people to participate in such incredible traditional art as well to keep it up," he said.

Charlie Santos, 29, another shadow puppet performer, said he enjoys working with the traditional Chinese art form, even though he doesn't have much background in it.

He said it felt really enjoyable interacting with children.

mingmeili@chinadailyusa.com