Chinese Theatre Works (CTW) performed their shadow puppetry piece “Tiger Tales” on Saturday, Feb. 28 at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry (BIMP) in Storrs, Conn.
The hour-long performance focused on a grandmother rabbit spirit who tells her granddaughter about her days as the Tiger’s prime minister.
CTW often performs traditional fairy tales, but “Tiger Tales” is an original work written by Stephen Kaplin and Kuang-Yu Fong, initially performed in 2002. Despite its modern initiation and Western influence, “Tiger Tales” draws on China’s 2,000-year-old history of shadow puppetry, including references to the Jade Rabbit in the moon and animal spirits.
“In China, we believe that animals can turn into humans,” Fong said. “How will I know whether a person is a real person or an animal spirit? Go to Chinatown and see — if someone has an animal on their head, that’s a spirit. Now you know the secret!”
The first story was based on the Chinese saying, “伴君如伴虎” or “Working for the emperor is as dangerous as working for a tiger.” In it, the tiger, the king of the jungle, looks for a prime minister to “do all the work and get none of the credit!” as Fong put.
The second story was based on the Chinese saying, “鸠占鹊巢, or as Fong translated, “The mean big bird took over the small bird’s nest.” In it, the unwelcome tiger appears in the newly-crowned Prime Minister Rabbit’s kitchen, to her peril. The audience participated by “crying” along with various animals that came to confront the tiger in the rabbit’s kitchen. The audience played along, chanting, “The tiger’sin my kitchen and he won’t get out!”
Chinese Theatre Works, founded by Kaplin and Fong in 2001, brings traditional Chinese performing arts to a modern stage, showcasing opera, shadow theatre, puppetry, dance and music. Kaplin studied puppetry at UConn under Dr. Frank Ballard, the founder of the University of Connecticut Puppet Arts Program. Fong majored in Chinese Opera at the Chinese Culture University in Taiwan and taught therebefore gaining a master’s in educational theater at New York University.
Performing with them was UConn alum Harrison Greene, a member of CTW with credits on Comedy Central, International Puppet Fringe NYC and more. The trio’s connection to the art form and to UConn’s campus made their performance even more meaningful.
After the show, Kaplin talked about the history of the shadow puppets from the show.
“All the shadow puppets you see here were based after our collection of traditional Chinese puppets, made out of donkey leather,” Kaplin said.
The puppets were brought to U.S. in the 1920s by Pauline Benton, an American puppeteer and scholar renowned for her work in Chinese shadow puppet theatre, Kaplin said.
“She passed away, and in her collection she had thousands of these leather puppets,” Kaplin said. “They were all packed away, stuffed into a hot garage in southern California for decades, until someone found it and gave it to our friend in NYC, Jo Humphrey.”
Jo Humphrey, the founder of The Gold Mountain Institute for Traditional Shadow Theater, spent years restoring hundreds of the puppets from the Benton collection. Upon her retirement, CTW received the restored puppets.
“We took them apart, put them on a Xerox machine and created these acetate, transparent puppets,” Kaplin said. Acetate puppets are less fragile, and more effective with the overhead projector.
The audience was filled with people of all ages. Children sat in the front, while students and community members filled the back chairs.
Helen Clark, a community member, attended the show.
“My dad used to work with Frank Ballard,” Clark said. “I was born during a Frank Ballard show that my father worked on: UConn’s production of Pippin, 1983. I grew up going to the puppet shows at UConn, I got my acting degree at UConn. Most of my best friends were in the puppetry program at UConn. Big love for the art and big love for BIMP!”
When asked about the challenges of the show, Kaplin said, “One of the challenges about doing stuff on the overhead projector is that everything is transparent. You have to give puppets space, light space, so you can see the figure. It’s kind of a design challenge in a way.”
The transparent puppets can easily overlay one another and create unintended shadows and effects, according to Greene. This restriction requires the puppeteers to be especially careful in how they maneuver the puppets.
“Because of the translucent nature of the puppet, there’s no hiding from mistakes,” Greene said.
Other challenges in performing include the lightness of the acetate puppets — as the puppets move, their movable limbs can get stuck — and the difficulty in seeing the puppets.
“When you perform in a dark place, if you don’t know where your puppet is, forget about it!” Fong said.