Shadow play (Tangshan Shadow Play)

Name of China's national intangible cultural heritage: Shadow Play (Tangshan Shadow Play)

Applicant: Tangshan City, Hebei Province

Project No.: 235

Project No.: Ⅳ - 91

Time of publication: 2006 (the first batch)

Category: Traditional Drama

Region: Hebei Province

Type: new item

Applicant: Tangshan City, Hebei Province

Protection unit: Tangshan Mass Art Museum

Brief introduction of shadow play (Tangshan Shadow Play)

Applicant: Tangshan City, Hebei Province

Shadow play is a kind of opera form that uses animal skin or cardboard to cut images and uses light to illuminate the cut images to perform stories. Its popularity is very wide, almost all over the country's provinces and regions, and forms a variety of shadow plays due to the different voices, such as Huaxian shadow play, Huayin laoqiang shadow play, agongqiang shadow play, xianbanqiang shadow play in Shaanxi, Daoqing shadow play in Huanxian County in Gansu, Wanwanqiang shadow play in Xiaoyi County in Shanxi, Tangshan Shadow Play in Hebei, Southern Hebei shadow play, Zhejiang shadow play Haining shadow play, Jianghan Plain shadow play in Hubei, Lufeng shadow play in Guangdong, Fuzhou shadow play and Lingyuan shadow play in Liaoning, etc.

The formation age of shadow play has not yet been determined, but according to the records of Menghua records in Tokyo written by Meng Yuanlao in the Southern Song Dynasty, it was mature and popular in the Song Dynasty at the latest. There were nine actors in the vashe of Bianliang in Tokyo, including Dong Shiwu, Zhao Qi and Cao Baoyi. There is a picture of shadow play in the Jin Dynasty mural of Wenshu Hall of Yanshan temple in Fanshi, Shanxi Province, which vividly shows the actual situation of Shanxi shadow play performance at that time. After the development of song, Jin, yuan and Ming Dynasties, shadow puppet shows a prosperous situation in Qing Dynasty.

Although there are many kinds of shadow play, the differences are mainly in the aspects of voice and repertoire, while the production and performance techniques of filmmakers are similar. Generally, the film makers scrape off the blood of the cattle skin, donkey skin and sheep skin, process them into translucent shape, and then carve them with color. The carving and drawing process is exquisite, and the shape is realistic. Generally, filmmakers are divided into head, body, limbs and other parts, all of which are silhouettes. The head is attached with helmets, and the body and limbs are dressed. After painting, they are baked and flattened with firebricks. During the performance, the actor's head is inserted into the body, and the body and limbs are connected. At the same time, three bamboo cuttings are installed on the body and hands to operate the performance. In addition to character modeling, we also need to carve some props, tables, chairs and scenery modeling to match the performance.

The main props are shadow windows, commonly known as "Liangzi", which are generally 3 feet high, 5 feet wide, no more than 4 feet high and no more than 6 feet wide. They are made of white paper for single person operation. The second is an oil lamp, which is used to reflect the movie player and perform the action.

Shadow play is an important traditional folk art in China. In recent years, due to the impact of modern film and television art, the audience and performance market are decreasing day by day. Many shadow plays are facing the danger of extinction and need to be rescued and protected.

Tangshan Shadow play, also known as luanzhou shadow play, leting shadow play and donkey shadow play, is one of the most influential types of Chinese shadow play. It is generally believed that luanzhou shadow play was founded in the late Ming Dynasty and prevailed in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, with a history of more than 400 years.

There are two main operators of Tangshan Shadow play, namely "online" and "offline". There are three poles dominating the action of the filmmaker, which are called "main pole" and "hand pole". There are usually five kinds of division of labor in Tangshan Shadow play performance, namely, taking, pasting, playing, pulling and singing.

The scripts of Tangshan Shadow play, also known as "Yingjuan", have at least 500 copies. Among them, there are more than 130 "liantaiben" and many single plays. The plays include wufenghui, erdumei, Qingyun sword, etc. The literary structure of traditional shadow play plays is that the characters appear on the stage with "poetry" and "right" at the end. Its rhymes are commonly used as "seven character sentence", "cross brocade", "three chasing seven", "five character Fu", "hard powder", "big Phnom Penh", "small Phnom Penh" and so on. These libretto structures are based on the antithesis of the upper and lower sentences, and each libretto is generally composed of several pairs of upper and lower sentences with the same rhyme. Based on the leting dialect, Tangshan Shadow play is good at singing and has a unique style. The basic modes include Daban, erxingban, sanxingban, Sanban, Pingchang, Huaqiang, desolate, sad, youyindiao, huanyangdiao, and sanqunqi, which are named for their special sentence patterns.

The carving of shadow puppet needs to go through several steps, such as scraping the skin, expanding the sample, coloring and oiling, and assembling the nail and pole. The knife edge and coloring are the best places to reflect the level of sculptors. Character modeling is divided into life, small, big, temples, ugly and so on.

The content of Tangshan Shadow play is an important material for deep analysis of local social customs and religious psychology. Tangshan Shadow Puppet artists have never stopped improving and innovating the materials and techniques of singing performance and stage props. These experiences are precious wealth for present and future generations. The inheritance of Tangshan Shadow play continues the way of oral and psychological teaching, which provides an important reference value for the way of cultural inheritance. Tangshan Shadow Play's singing, music, performance, modeling has a unique local style, which is praised by domestic and foreign peers and audiences, and has high appreciation and research value.

At present, there are less than 10 people who can write shadow play scripts. Shadow artists are too old to find apprentices to inherit them. There are fewer and fewer people who appreciate shadow play art. Tangshan Shadow play is facing the dilemma of lost.

Chinese PinYin : Pi Ying Xi Tang Shan Pi Ying Xi