The Art of
Chinese Shadow Puppet Theater
At Beacon Hill Elementary School in Seattle our class is comprised
of rich diversity of languages and cultures. Incorporating a multicultural
curriculum is vital in enriching the learning of the students. The
class is made up of 24 4th and 5th grade students, many of whom come
from a variety of countries, including India, Vietnam, China, Japan,
Mexico, Cambodia, and Guatemala.
The projects require the students to read folktales, learn about Chinese
shadow puppets, keep notebooks for play ideas, create numerous puppets,
design a theater, write plays and put on a series of performances.
From the beginning at Beacon Hill there was an extremely high level
of interest in the project; the students were particularly excited
by the arts component – creating the puppets, scenery and theater.
In China, shadow puppet theater was a form of popular entertainment
in busy night markets, where crowds of merchants, peasants and travelers
would gather to see performances based on myths, local legends and
religious parables.
The puppets themselves are intricately carved and vividly painted.
Each region of China has a distinct style, identifiable by the intricacy
of the cut designs and the size of the puppets.
We began our exploration by viewing “Chinese Shadow Puppet Theater”,
an award winning CD-ROM by Pentewa Interactive. My classroom has 6
Apple iMac computers and the students had the opportunity to use the
“Chinese Shadow Puppet Theater” program to learn about the
history and construction of puppets and experiment with the interactive
design activities to create a variety of puppets.
Students were divided into groups, each student presenting his or
her favorite folktale to their group for the purpose of developing
stories and creating scripts.
The Artwork
We looked at examples of traditional Chinese shadow puppets for inspiration.
The Chinese Shadow Puppet Theater CD also allows the student to mix
and match traditional puppet parts, print-out the pieces in black
and white, color and assemble unique puppets. Kids also created some
of the most beautiful puppets by working with tracing paper and just
looking at the assembly of classic puppets,
The puppets were drawn or printed out on heavy paper and decorated
using fine point markers. The only special tool that is useful for
putting the puppets together is a single hole paper punch. The puppet
parts are then attached to each other with paper brads and then mounted
on rods made of straws. Again we simplified by using only two straws
per puppet; one attached to the main body and one to the forearm.
The theater was constructed from a cardboard box approximately 4’
long by 3’ high by 2.5’ deep. The students used poster paints
to paint the exterior of the box. Their designs were simple but effective.
We used the words “Chinese Shadow Puppet Theater” in the
wide variety of languages spoken by our kids as decorative elements
on the box. We introduced a series of inexpensive Chinese instruments
including cymbals, a drum, rhythm sticks, and bells and demonstrated
their use for the class.
Our next step was to create posters announcing our Chinese Theater
Festival and begin dress rehearsals.
