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Shadow Puppetry

Ⅳ-91Traditional OperaMuoupiyingyishujuyuan, HunanBatch 2 (2008)Extension Item

01 · Historical Records

Hunan shadow puppetry has several hundred traditional plays; the Hunan Provincial Marionette and Shadow Puppet Art Theatre, founded in the 1950s, carries on the artistic tradition of Hunan shadow puppetry, and over more than half a century has created and staged many excellent plays winning major awards at home and abroad, among which The Tortoise and the Crane and Two Friends are much praised and have become the theatre's repertory pieces.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Hunan shadow puppetry has a long history and is widely found across Hunan. Its figures are mostly “paper puppets”; in modelling it absorbs the essence of such folk arts as paper-cutting, painting and carving, its carving technique rich, combining solid and void, complexity and simplicity, with beautiful and wonderfully lifelike modelling. Its performance is fine and expressive with strong movement. Its figures are made mainly of paper used with heads carved from ox or donkey hide, the joints controlled by fine bamboo slips in operation, their movements nimble and wide-ranging and well suited to animal plays and martial scenes; while keeping the traditional repertory the theatre has created many new plays on fairy-tale and fable subjects.

The Tortoise and the Crane

An excellent play of the Hunan Provincial Marionette and Shadow Puppet Art Theatre, much praised and a repertory piece.

Two Friends

An excellent play of the Hunan Provincial Marionette and Shadow Puppet Art Theatre, much praised and a repertory piece.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Hunan shadow puppetry is widely found across Hunan, most concentrated in Changsha, Hengyang and Changde; the Hunan Provincial Marionette and Shadow Puppet Art Theatre is the provincial professional transmission body, bearing the tasks of performance, creation and teaching.

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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Li Guixiang (as recorded in the official dossier of an associated inheritor): female, Han, born in August 1943 in Yueyang county, Hunan. A national first-grade actor. In 1959 she entered the Hunan Provincial Art School and after graduating was assigned to the Hunan Provincial Marionette and Shadow Puppet Art Theatre, working in shadow performance. In her performing technique she can operate two or more figures at once, her movements lifelike and forceful, fine and expressive. In animal plays she is both natural and mimetic, both real and suggestive. The basic-skills training textbook for shadow puppetry she wrote in 1987 was adopted by the Hunan Provincial Art School as a three-year teaching text for shadow performance, and in 2004 she independently wrote and published The Legendary Shadow Puppetry: Hunan Shadow Puppetry Volume. She is a representative inheritor of shadow puppetry (Hunan shadow puppetry) in the fourth batch of national intangible cultural heritage projects, has won the “leading-role award”, the “Tian Han Performance Award” and the “Yuhua Award” at provincial new-play festivals, and has worked ceaselessly to train successors and to inherit and develop the art.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

  1. Shadow Puppetry (Muoupiyingyishujuyuan, Hunan) · China ICH Official Project Archive
  2. Li Guixiang · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

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