Shadow Play
   HOME
*



picture info

Shadow Play
Shadow play, also known as shadow puppetry, is an ancient form of storytelling and entertainment which uses flat articulated cut-out figures (shadow puppets) which are held between a source of light and a translucent screen or scrim. The cut-out shapes of the puppets sometimes include translucent color or other types of detailing. Various effects can be achieved by moving both the puppets and the light source. A talented puppeteer can make the figures appear to walk, dance, fight, nod and laugh. Shadow play is popular in various cultures, among both children and adults in many countries around the world. More than 20 countries are known to have shadow show troupes. Shadow play is an old tradition and it has a long history in Southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia. It has been an ancient art and a living folk tradition in China, India, Iran and Nepal. It is also known in Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Greece, Germany, France, and the United States. ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Greece
Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the northeast. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Sea of Crete and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin, featuring thousands of islands. The country consists of nine traditional geographic regions, and has a population of approximately 10.4 million. Athens is the nation's capital and largest city, followed by Thessaloniki and Patras. Greece is considered the cradle of Western civilization, being the birthplace of democracy, Western philosophy, Western literature, historiography, political science, major scientific and mathematica ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Mahabharata
The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; sa, महाभारतम्, ', ) is one of the two major Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the Kurukshetra War and the fates of the Kaurava and the Pandava, Pāṇḍava princes and their successors. It also contains Hindu philosophy, philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four "goals of life" or ''purusharthas, puruṣārtha'' (12.161). Among the principal works and stories in the ''Mahābhārata'' are the ''Bhagavad Gita'', the story of Damayanti, the story of Shakuntala, the story of Pururava and Urvashi, the story of Savitri and Satyavan, the story of Kacha (sage), Kacha and Devayani, the story of Rishyasringa and an abbreviated version of the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa'', often considered as works in their own right. Traditionally, the authorship of the ''M ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Ramayana
The ''Rāmāyana'' (; sa, रामायणम्, ) is a Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epic composed over a period of nearly a millennium, with scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text ranging from the 8th to 4th centuries BCE, and later stages extending up to the 3rd century CE. ''Ramayana'' is one of the two important epics of Hinduism, the other being the ''Mahabharata, Mahābhārata''. The epic, traditionally ascribed to the Maharishi Valmiki, narrates the life of Sita, the Princess of Janakpur, and Rama, a legendary prince of Ayodhya city in the kingdom of Kosala. The epic follows his fourteen-year exile to the forest urged by his father King Dasharatha, on the request of Rama's stepmother Kaikeyi; his travels across forests in the South Asia, Indian subcontinent with his wife Sita and brother Lakshmana, the kidnapping of Sita by Ravana – the king of Lanka, that resulted in war; and Rama's eventual return to Ayodhya to be crowned kin ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Kraig Grady
Kraig Grady (born 1952) is a US-Australian composer/sound artist. He has composed and performed with an ensemble of microtonal instruments of his own design and also worked as a shadow puppeteer, tuning theorist, filmmaker, world music radio DJ and concert promoter. His works feature his own ensembles of acoustic instruments, including metallophones, marimbas, hammered dulcimers and reed organs tuned to microtonal just intonation scales. His compositions include accompaniments for silent films and shadow plays. An important influence in the development of Grady's music was Harry Partch, like Grady, a musician from the Southwest, and a composer of theatrical works in Just Intonation for self-built instruments. Many of his compositions use unusual meters of very extended lengths. Biography Born in Montebello, California in 1952, Grady began composing while still in his teens. After studies with Nicolas Slonimsky, Dean Drummond, Dorrance Stalvey and Byong-Kon Kim, he produced ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Play School (Australian TV Series)
''Play School'' is an Australian educational television show for children produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). It is the longest-running children's show in Australia and the second-longest-running children's show worldwide after British series ''Blue Peter''. An estimated 80% of pre-school children under six watch the program at least once a week. It is screened three times each weekday on ABC Kids, at 9 am, 11:30 am and 3:30 pm (from 7 July 2014) and twice daily each weekend at 9 am and 3:30 pm. ''Play School'' was admitted to the Logies' Hall of Fame in 2006, the program's 40th anniversary year. It is one of only five Australian television programs to be inducted. History ''Play School'' premiered on 18 July 1966 and was based on the British program of the same name. (The British version started in 1964 and ended in 1988; the show's format was then sold to Australia.) The first episode began transmitting that day, as the program was originally trans ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Jim Henson
James Maury Henson (September 24, 1936 – May 16, 1990) was an American puppeteer, animator, cartoonist, actor, inventor, and filmmaker who achieved worldwide notice as the creator of The Muppets and '' Fraggle Rock'' (1983–1987) and director of '' The Dark Crystal'' (1982) and ''Labyrinth'' (1986). He was born in Greenville, Mississippi, and raised in both Leland, Mississippi, and University Park, Maryland. Henson began developing puppets in high school. He created '' Sam and Friends'' (1955–1961), a short-form comedy television program, while he was a freshman at the University of Maryland, College Park in collaboration with Jane Nebel who was a senior. A few years later the two married. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in home economics, after which he and Jane produced coffee advertisements and developed experimental films. In 1958, he co-founded Muppets, Inc. with Jane, which became The Jim Henson Company. In 1969, Henson joined th ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Richard Bradshaw (puppeteer)
Richard Bradshaw (born 1938) is an internationally renowned Australian puppeteer. Richard Bradshaw is a one time Artistic Director of the Marionette Theatre of Australia. He is a shadow puppeteer who also writes for puppets. In 2005, he was commissioned by Terrapin Puppet Theatre to write ''The Storyteller's Shadow: a Celebration of Hans Christian Andersen'' which toured around Tasmania, to Denmark and to Singapore and Malaysia. Jim Henson, a fellow puppeteer, featured the work of Bradshaw as part of a six-part television series on puppetry. His shadow puppets were used for animations and stories on Play School. Bradshaw was awarded the Order of Australia The Order of Australia is an honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, on the advice of the Australian Go ... Medal for services to puppetry and the performing arts.
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Cinematography
Cinematography (from ancient Greek κίνημα, ''kìnema'' "movement" and γράφειν, ''gràphein'' "to write") is the art of motion picture (and more recently, electronic video camera) photography. Cinematographers use a lens to focus reflected light from objects into a real image that is transferred to some image sensor or light-sensitive material inside a movie camera. These exposures are created sequentially and preserved for later processing and viewing as a motion picture. Capturing images with an electronic image sensor produces an electrical charge for each pixel in the image, which is electronically processed and stored in a video file for subsequent processing or display. Images captured with photographic emulsion result in a series of invisible latent images on the film stock, which are chemically " developed" into a visible image. The images on the film stock are projected for viewing the same motion picture. Cinematography finds uses in many field ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour. He is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential writer in the German language, his work having a profound and wide-ranging influence on Western literary, political, and philosophical thought from the late 18th century to the present day.. Goethe took up residence in Weimar in November 1775 following the success of his first novel, '' The Sorrows of Young Werther'' (1774). He was ennobled by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Karl August, in 1782. Goethe was an early participant in the '' Sturm und Drang'' literary movement. During his first ten years in Weimar, Goethe became a member of the Duke's privy council (1776–1785), sat on the war and highway commissions, oversaw the reopening of silv ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Tholu Bommalata
''Tholu bommalata'' is the shadow puppet theatre tradition of the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. Its performers are part of a group of wandering entertainers and peddlers who pass through villages during the course of a year and offer to sing ballads, tell fortunes, sell amulets, perform acrobatics, charm snakes, weave fishnets, tattoo local people and mend pots. This ancient custom, which for centuries before radio, film, and television provided knowledge of Hindu epics and local folk tales, not to mention news, spread to the most remote corners of the Indian subcontinent. ''Tholu bommalata'' literally means "the dance of leather puppets" (''tholu'' – "leather" and ''bommalata'' – "puppet dance"). The puppeteers comprise some of the various entertainers who perform all night and usually reenact various stories from Hindu epics such as the ''Ramayana'' and ''Mahabharata''. Tholu Bommalaata The performance begins with a series of sung invocations and a line of ornate, ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]