Chinese shadow theatre fights to stay in the light as dropping audiences force troupes to be creative
- Shadow theatre has been a celebrated tradition for 2,000 years in China, but a lack of trainee puppeteers threatens its existence
- Puppeteers tell age old stories to schoolchildren around the country. One Beijing troupe is trying to keep the traditional alive
Shadow puppets flitting across screens and reliving age old stories have fascinated Chinese people for some 2,000 years, but with falling audiences, troupes are having to be creative to stay on the stage.
On a translucent screen in a Beijing classroom, a child with a cosmic ring takes on the son of the dragon king, attacking him with huge thrusts of his lance.
Behind the screen, puppeteers use rods to move the figures, to the joy of the schoolchildren watching.
The legends of the past are the bedrock of shadow theatre – a tradition still popular in the countryside, though it has lost much ground in large cities over the last few decades.
Shadow theatre was celebrated up until the 1960s when it was targeted as part of the Cultural Revolution. It had something of a renaissance in the 1980s and in 2011 was included on Unesco’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list.