{"id":610,"date":"2019-06-15T10:26:25","date_gmt":"2019-06-15T10:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/?p=610"},"modified":"2022-02-06T20:07:39","modified_gmt":"2022-02-06T20:07:39","slug":"tracing-shadowson-the-shadow-theatre-trail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/tracing-shadowson-the-shadow-theatre-trail\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracing Shadows
On the Shadow Theatre Trail"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fabrizio Montecchi<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Ermanno Olmi, the great film director (recently deceased), said that an artist \u201ccannot live without a past\u201d and to go forwards \u201cone must look back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was about to turn 30 when, for the first time, I\nfelt a strong impulse to look back. I was searching for the answer to a simple\nquestion. What is shadow theatre?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Ten years of practice had filled me with many doubts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Was shadow theatre a kind of sons et lumi\u00e8res<\/em> show, a home crafted type of live cinema or a\ntheatrical art form in its own right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was fully aware that the present, with its\nexasperating attention paid to images, was confusing me. The past, on the other\nhand… what was it? Did I have a past to refer to?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What were my origins? Where do I come from?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was my history as a European shadow theatre\nplayer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

So I decided to trace the shadow theatre route to find\na past I could question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I soon found myself following tracks that took me much\nfurther back than XIXth Century European shadow theatre, which until then was considered\nto be its forefather both from a temporal and cultural point of view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found myself following tracks that led me directly\nto the Asian continent: to the starting point of shadow theatre. Tracks that\ntold me of one long history of travels and migrations: of peoples, ideas and\ntechniques.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, while other theatre forms were born and\ndeveloping, albeit with a thousand differences, in all continents and\ncontaminating and influencing each other reciprocally over the centuries, shadow\ntheatre was born only in the Far East and did not exist at all in the rest of\nthe world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From there it has spread with long migratory processes\nup to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are all children of Asian shadow theatre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

So I developed a keen interest in the Orient, in those\ndeeply rooted traditions which I had ignored until then. For me it was like\nentering a fluid geographical space, without clear demarcations, where time\nexpands and history digresses from legend or myth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the lack of evidence, it is unlikely that we\nwill ever know, with certainty, the genesis of shadow theatre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Probably it begins in the caves in different parts of\nthe world but certainly continues thanks to the nomadic peoples who lived in\nthe steppes of Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is believed that the condition of a \u201cnomadic\u201d way\nof life favoured the birth of shadow theatre as we know it today. The flame,\nburning within the tents, created shadows which, thanks to the translucency of\nthe skin they were made of, were cast without revealing the object that\nproduced them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allow me to digress a moment. In both these archaic forms which were practised in the caves and the tents, the screen was always an element which served as shelter and protection. It was a dwelling. Only subsequently did the screen become a material screen, no longer part of a dwelling, but having the sole function of revealing the shadows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word \u201cscreen\u201d, which I have always found incoherent in the way it is used in shadow theatre, does seem to be in keeping with its original function. A screen is, in fact, a synonym of shelter, defence, protection, cover, shield. Is this merely a strange coincidence?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Returning to my topic: this rudimentary shadow play\nknown to prehistoric peoples in central Asia spread from there into China, India\nand Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The most popular belief is that shadow theatre was\nborn in China (Yingxi<\/em>) and then spread\nthroughout the South-East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Others, however, think that the Chinese inherited it\nfrom the Indian (Chayanataka<\/em>), as did\nthe Javanese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this theory is not widely accepted as many claim that\nshadow theatre existed in Java (Wayang\nKulit<\/em>) long before the Indian tradition in the XIth Century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n